A Voice in the Dark
by bluRaaven
Summary: After his betrayal by Igmund Ulfric, still not recovered from the war and his captivity, wakes to find himself imprisoned once more; this time deep beneath Markarth, a city he has come to loathe almost as much as its corrupt, sycophantic ruler. He does not expect anything good to come out of that dump of a place, but surprisingly it does, in the form of the only company he has.
1. Chapter 1

Part 5 of the 'Price of Freedom' series. While it is advisable to read parts 1-4 (especially part 4!) it is not an absolute necessity. Because they're all tied together, additional knowledge of the Blacktyde Chronicles certainly helps to follow the plot better, though it should be possible to understand what is going on without it.  
WARNING in the AN at the bottom.

* * *

Ulfric is slow to wake to the throbbing in his head timed with the beating of his heart. He either has the worst hangover ever, or-

Or somebody knocked him out even as they butchered his guard around him.

He fully jerks into consciousness to darkness and a cool, damp draft. Behind his eyelids Jytte's head dissolves again to spray blood, brain matter and shards of bone on her Jarl and lover. Not that they are the same person. Ulfric has not touched a woman since...since the events that led him disinclined to do so in first place. But he can hear Fjori's anguished shout as the pretty brunette's head crumbles onto itself. Fjori, who has been his friend since they had shared a tent in the Legion. Fjori who suddenly sprouts a spear through his neck, who had survived four years of war and the elves' ruinous magic to die choking on his own blood and reaching out to the corpse of the woman who carried his child.

Ulfric catches sight of an eyeball and a part of the jaw, teeth still remarkably intact lying in a pool of blood and draws air into his lungs, despite reeling from shock. There are more screams as his other soldiers are overwhelmed and he does not recall whether he manages unleash that Shout because the rest is only blackness.

_Betrayed_. He has been betrayed. It seems he is doomed to suffer that fate from those whom he believed to be his allies. First the Empire, now Igmund. The former fallen so that a Colovian noble could keep his throne and afford all the luxuries the Dominion has to offer and the second succumbed to fear and whispers from poisonous tongues and bought off with promises of land and power to sate his greed.

Once more Markarth has proved its saying to be true. Blood and silver.

Blood of his soldiers covering the polished stones of the city in slick rivulets of crimson and silver from the mines to acquire the silence of any possible witnesses.

This time though he will not remain a prisoner. He is not helpless, and he is backed by an army, the bulk of which is still stationed inside the city. Suddenly he feels a pang of relief at sending Galmar away. A bad idea it might have been, but it saved his housecarl's life. He had long ago devoted his life to protecting his friend, and Ulfric is happy to return the favour.

Without anything else to do, Ulfric raises his hand to his head and gently probes at the sore area. His fingers come away sticky and he rubs them together. The action causes the faintest odour of his blood to rise to his nose, a smell he is more familiar with than he cares to think about.

His breath falls into a deep but quick rhythm that he is all too conscious of.

The Nord tries to focus on other things. Like the absence of shackles that he would have expected to be there in such a place. He does not have to see to know that he is in a dungeon again. He knows the distinct feeling of one. The cold, clammy air of a place far underground surrounded by thick walls. The smell of mould and wet stone and the never-ending sound of water dripping and the scurrying of small feet echoing through the empty space.

Ulfric imagines he can hear voices higher up. He sits up and strains his ears, but try as he might he cannot make out what they are saying. The warrior imagines Igmund, the faithless spawn of some half-Nord bitch and his goat sire issuing orders to his guards and it brings up memories that boil over in a hazy mist of fury the colour of Jytte's blood.

"IGMUND, YOU DUPLICITOUS BASTARD! WHEN I GET OUT OF HERE I WILL HAND YOUR TRAITOROUS HEAD TO THE FORSWORN! YOU BETTER START SLEEPING WITH YOUR EYES OPEN, YOU CRAVEN BOOTLICKER!"

It is beyond enough to provoke a duel. He may not be in form or in good health but he has his anger wrapped around him tightly, like that cloak that has become a part of his name and there is always the Voice and Igmund knows that. The conversation stops for the longest while. The Jarl does not come down to face his captive's charges.

Oily smoke curls in plumes of black from a single tallow candle the nervous guards left for him so that he can find his way around in the dark. The food they brought was disgusting, barely better than offal from the kitchens. Ulfric briefly chokes on the overcooked vegetables, stringy meat and white clots of fat, but he manages to swallow it all and keep it down. There is no cure to being picky better than war and starvation.

His prison consists of two walls and iron bars that he cannot Shout apart because the power of his Voice will go right past them. He could try Shouting at the stonework, but the chances are high it will either avail him nothing or bring down the whole place on top of his head. Either would be bad.

The cell is rather spacious and covered in straw that smells of horse, but empty. He has a pallet that does not look as much filthy as it does old and a roughly spun blanket. Other than that there is only a bucket for him to shit in. Again, he tells himself he suffered worse, although the indignity of it burns under his skin.

_There_, he had been a prisoner of war. _Here_, an honoured guest.

For a nation that prides itself on beauty and perfection he has found the elves' minds are full of the most vile atrocities only perverted sadists can come up with.

He half-expects to see _her_ again.

Somebody else comes for him instead. Footsteps, he can hear them resonate – slow and heavy.

It's not one of the guards to bring his food. Ulfric does not know how much time has passed, down here it is all too easy to lose track of it. His candle will burn for a good six hours at least. The rest of the time he has to spend in the pitch black of underground. When the light is out he lets himself fall into a fevered state of unconsciousness that is neither restful, nor can it be called sleep.

He hopes to be released now that several weeks must have passed. Igmund has made his point. After all he has done and been through Ulfric did not expect to be left to rot down here. He is having second thoughts.

The man who arrives does nothing to alleviate them. Ulfric recognizes the hefty Nord with braided blond hair and amber eyes. He watches impassively as the lad pulls a loaf of bread from his bag and hopes the growling of his stomach is inaudible. The other man seems to waver between handing it over and laying it upon the none too clean ground.

Ulfric decides to help out. "Why don't you just throw it at me?"

The warrior looks at him emotionlessly as the seconds stretch between them. "If that is what you want."

Ulfric's head hits the wall at his back none too gently. "What I want, _boy_, is for you to sod off."

"Alright." The food disappears again as the other man turns to leave. "Have fun in the dark", he throws over his shoulder. "On your own."

"Wait!", Ulfric calls after him, gets up with difficulty because his knee almost buckles beneath his weight. He has to grit his teeth but he manages to force out an apology. "I am sorry. That was uncalled for." He approaches the bars and reaches out in a manner that he hopes appears grateful rather than greedy. "Thank you."

The other Nord hands over his little gift and all Ulfric can think of is that he has not had real bread in ages. When he looks up again it is to find himself under the scrutiny of his visitor. The lad made his delivery, but now he lingers.

Ulfric is not some curiosity to be gawked at. He scowls and walks back to his pallet to slowly sink down on it. "Do you want something else?"

"I wanted to look at the man whose orders killed my brother and friends and ripped my family apart."

"Well?" Ulfric's words have almost doomed a nation; he finds it difficult to care for one measly family. "You've seen him."

"You look different than you did at the parade." The lad makes to introduce himself. "I'm-"

"Yes, I know who you are", Ulfric interrupts the other Nord and reclines, eyes fixed on the ceiling. "I have lost my freedom, not my memory."

Ulfric's bitter response apparently robs his visitor of the last patience and desire to deal with his dark mood. He inclines his head in farewell. "It was nice meeting you, Ulfric Stormcloak."

* * *

**AN:** If you are uncomfortable with any of the following topics, you might want to refrain from reading this fanfic: graphic depictions of violence, death and torture, blood, gore, abuse, crude language, homosexuality or otherworldly religion.

I can't be the only one thinking that there is something incredibly hot and satisfying in picturing Ulfric bellow swearwords in that gorgeous voice of his.

I wanted to get this out as a kind of placeholder for part 5 of the series because it will be a lengthy affair. Part 6 should be up soon, but updates for this story will be slow and probably not before I finish BtS.


	2. Chapter 2

Ulfric does not expect to see the lad again after his overtly unwelcoming attitude, but he does and it is with mixed feelings that he watches him set a torch into one of the iron holders. Unlike the last time the blond warrior is wearing a skilfully wrought armour well above what a common guard can afford and he has a bag slung over one broad shoulder that he sets on the ground carefully before straightening and turning to the prisoner.

"How are you?" There is only the faintest trace of wariness staining his otherwise friendly tone.

"Enjoying myself." Ulfric can hear the other man's heavy exhale at his cutting response and is not sure whether it is not quite a laugh or just plain exasperation.

"You don't look like it."

Ulfric sits up, not comfortable with the warrior's presence, but he does not want to give up on his hopefully convincing appearance of indifference. "Well, that's because I can't let anybody know that I secretly like to slum it in prisons all over Tamriel."

"Huh." The lad only grunts in answer and Ulfric wonders if he might be weak of mind to miss such evident sarcasm – until he catches a glimpse of the faintest of smirks. "Which one's your favourite, so far?"

A silent glare is the only reply the other man gets as the Jarl builds up his courage to enquire "What happened to my men?"

_He remembers asking her a similar question. He regretted it soon enough. _

But his companion is a Nord, not an Altmer and that was _then,_ not _now_, and though he still against all reason expects to convulse with pain any second, no bolt of white-hot electricity follows. Markarth. He is in Markarth, he has to remember.

Ulfric cannot tell whether the blond warrior notices the chill that seems to have gotten hold of him and if so, whether he cares at all. His demeanour remains unchanged as he explains that "Most were imprisoned. They have been set free by now."

"They will come for me", the Jarl's son speaks with conviction. He did not notice getting up, but suddenly he finds himself in front of the other man, his further way cut off by bars.

The lad looks at him with a mixture of pity and sympathy and declares that, "No they won't. They leave for Windhelm ere the month is over."

Traitors, all of them! Ulfric cannot believe that he is being abandoned here, not by Igmund but by his own trusted allies. "What could have cowed my father's liegemen?", he asks, voice low and dangerous.

The answer, when it comes, is worse than an actual physical blow could ever be. "Igmund has threatened to hand you over to the Thalmor if they didn't comply."

Ulfric comes back to himself to find the wall at his back. "Will you?" If it comes to that, he will force them to kill him, he decides and takes comfort in the resolution.

"Not me, no", the warrior replies equally softly and his eyes come to rest briefly on the other man's hand before returning to Ulfric's own. "I cannot speak for Jarl Igmund."

No, Ulfric realizes and clenches his fist, conscious that the action comes too late. His frantic, stuttering heartbeat slows down with comprehension. Igmund will not deliver him to anybody. He is going to need him to blackmail his father or he will find all of Eastmarch at his doorstep before the leaves turn golden with autumn's first chill.

His father is yet another thing Ulfric has not dared to let himself think about. By now his first, triumphant letter should have arrived. He winces with the thought and sinks back down on the cot, worn out by this brief exchange more than he was by the battle. He watches the lad watch him and his eyes follow the sound of a pebble as it is kicked to disappear forever in the dark beyond their cone of flickering light.

"The other guards treat you alright?", the soldier at long last asks, visibly uncomfortable after the turn their talk has taken.

"They don't treat me at all", Ulfric replies civilly enough. The only ones to come down here are the jailor, and only to bring him food and water and to empty his pot. And, once, that Imperial to read a verdict as false as Igmund's promise. From the other side of the room. Bloody coward.

He remembers all too well the way the doors have closed after the man's hurried departure, the sound one of finality.

"They're probably afraid you'll shout them to pieces", the lad remarks cheerfully.

"And I could." If not the bars, then at least those behind them. The remark does not provoke any response from Ulfric's companion and so he asks further "Where exactly am I, anyway?"

"In the dungeon beneath Markarth." As if it wasn't obvious. "And before you ask, you are better guarded than the Understone Keep and Cidhna Mine combined. And that's something."

It could be the truth, or, for all Ulfric knows, a blatant lie. He needs to find out more. Before he can do so, however, the soldier remembers the bag at his feet with a slight start.

"Oh. I brought you a few things." He looks up at Ulfric with apology, but there is no arguing with his directions. "I'll need you to face the wall, hands behind your head."

Ulfric gets up slowly. It takes him longer than usual. He despises it, having his back to another, but he wants to eat and so he complies. The other man must see or sense his reluctance.

"Don't try anything", he warns. "There's enough soldiers up there to make you regret it, trust me."

Trust. Ulfric almost begins to laugh, but decides not to because really there is nothing amusing about it at all. He knew a time when a Nord's word could be trusted. He also knows how little promises are worth, but he does as he is told. Whatever the lad has brought him, he is probably better off with it.

"That's not your head", the warrior says when the prisoner only stretches out his right arm.

A fact the jailor has pointed out several times already. Ulfric's reply is always the same. "I cannot lift my arm like that." He can, though it hurts, but the position allows him to watch the other man from the very corners of his eyes if he turns his head ever so slightly. Ulfric hears the jingle of keys, the scrape of the lock turning and a rustle as the bag is moved. The procedure is quickly over and the door closes again.

One chance wasted, and he wonders if there will be another. If there really is a guard waiting up there, ready to come running at the first sign of trouble, if he could get that Shout off in time.

Not if his visitor knows how to throw that small axe he carries at his hip. Not in his current state, anyway. But maybe next time. He only has to make sure there will be one and leaves the question of 'what then?' for another time to contemplate.

Ulfric lets his arms fall back to his sides and turns to open the bag and within he finds a bundle of furs, a thick blanket wrapped around a pitcher filled with water and a flat wooden basin. There is a piece of soap, food, and chew sticks and it is more than he has dared to hope for.

"You deserve this much at last", the lad mutters and it is too dark to tell if his face flushes with redness. From his tone Ulfric thinks it might. Maybe...an idea begins to form in the back of his mind.

"Will you come again?", the Jarl's son asks, abandoning the gift for the time being.

An eyebrow is raised in response to his terse question. "I thought you wanted to be left alone."

"I have changed my mind."

The lad nods after reflecting on the prisoner's plea for a brief while. "I'll be back tomorrow when my shift ends", he says.

Not that _when_ matters to Ulfric; down here time has lost all meaning. Yet he feels strangely grateful not to have been entirely forgotten and left on his own and hates himself for that sentiment.

* * *

**AN:** There's nothing to make one want to write about the Reach like a two week trek through the Dolomites *longing sigh*

BtS should update this week.


	3. Chapter 3

Ulfric is asleep the next time he hears the metallic jingle of keys and the doors to his prison slam shut, the sound echoing through the corridor. He jerks awake, but not up; consciousness leaving him disoriented and making the room around him spin. He spots the candle; it is a good bit shorter, but he could not have been asleep for long he thinks at the same time as he takes notice of somebody whistling as they descend the steps.

Ulfric blinks rapidly to keep his eyes from closing again, his heart pounding while his limbs disobey him. He usually is quick to rouse at the slightest of disturbances, but this time is different and he has to fight his tired body's demand for rest.

All he does anymore is sleep. The longer, the more exhausted he becomes.

But the footsteps are coming closer and he cannot breathe or move, feels as if some leaden weight was atop his chest, holding him in place. The warrior remembers the witch elves' magic, the green light they used to rob him of control, make him go limp and inert as they handled him.

When feeling floods him, a rush of warmth against the cold of fear, he rolls up to sit against the wall, just as his visitor comes into sight.

It is the boy. Again. At least he kept his word. Of all the people who would remember the promises they made him, it has to be the country bumpkin.

Ulfric cannot feel the arm he has lain on, but he rubs his forearm against his face, with more force than necessary. He is aware of the hot moisture of his pants against his clammy skin, and wonders what in Oblivion just happened to him. He never wishes to experience a terrifying numbness like before again.

"I have something for you", the soldier says in greeting, eager and with enough cheer to give the Jarl's son a toothache. He holds something up, a blurry shape that gleams golden in the dim light. Ulfric does not recognize the object, his heavy-lidded eyes failing to focus.

"What?", Ulfric growls. Sleep had made his voice rough and his throat sore. He is angry, at himself for being caught off-guard and with his defences down.

"Get your arse up and see for yourself", is the only answer he gets.

He does, not because he is told to, but because it is better to face the other man on his feet. The rush of blood to his head robs Ulfric of his sight and he has to wait for the darkness to pass and the subsequent specks of white to dissolve back into colours. The world returns and with it his sense of balance, disturbed only by a faint ringing in his ears. He rubs at his face with both hands and no matter how hard he tries to crack down on the yawn, it breaks free and he shakes his head, glaring at the man before him as tears prick at his eyes.

The lad is holding up an amulet of Talos, the miniature weapon spinning on a leather cord.

"That's not my amulet." Ulfric works his jaw; it aches and he has a feeling he has been clenching it. Thankfully, he does not remember his dream.

"No", the other Nord replies. "It's mine." He looks somewhat chagrined as he says, "It's just bronze...I think. We all got them before the battle."

The amulet is of poor workmanship, yes, it is one of the hundreds of identical ones Ulfric had ordered made for the soldiers. His own, the one that had been forged by his ancestor, is gone, taken from him, probably to serve as an addition to Igmund's treasury, as a token of his triumph.

Ulfric doubts that he will ever get it back and wonders what his father will say when he returns without it.

"Why are you giving it to me?", he asks, but takes the offered gift. The metal is warm against the palm of his hand.

He had not renounced his belief in Talos in the depths of a Thalmor torture chamber; he will not deny the god now. The pendant is, after all, a holy symbol.

"Talos worship has been outlawed again", the other Nord explains contritely.

"So you want me blamed instead of yourself?"

"Sure. Nobody suspects _you_ of Talos worship", the soldier bites back, quickly followed by, "I'm sorry." He genuinely appears to be. "I know what you did to bring it back."

"Do you?", Ulfric asks callously, wrapping the leather cord around his hand until it cuts a welt into the flesh. The boy knows nothing of what he had suffered. "What else do you know about me?"

It was meant as a jibe, a rhetorical question, but the lad obviously has no notion of such figures of speech.

"Not much", he replies with that damned honesty of his. "Why don't you tell me something about yourself?", he prompts.

Ulfric spares the soldier a look, brief and sharp. For the amulet he is willing to indulge him. "Like what?"

"I don't know." The blonde Nord appears unsure now that the prisoner is playing along – he had not expected him to – and finally settles on "What's your favourite colour?"

"Blue", Ulfric responds truthfully. "The dark, greyish blue of the sky before a storm."

_The colour of the sky above Windhelm. _

He has no interest in his visitor's favourite colour, food, or hairstyle, or the name of his pet cat and he does not ask a question in return, wishing the other gone.

"So, your favourite colour is blue", the soldier repeats after a moment of uncomfortable silence, still lingering. "What else?"

Ulfric senses that he will not shut up and leave him be so he can pray. He did not want to be alone when he invited the boy back, but now he regrets his decision. He should work on winning the other Nord over, but he does not have the energy to muster a semblance of friendliness, to pretend to be interested in a _chat_.

'They might as well be efficient about this', he thinks, 'And cut through the small talk.' "I'm the only son of the Jarl of Eastmarch", Ulfric begins, "I was first summoned to High Hrothgar at the age of six, studied the Way of the Voice, and abandoned my training as a Greybeard to fight in the Great War. And now here I am. What is there to tell?"

"I'm a farmer. I killed lots of people and got famous for it", the warrior replies, matching Ulfric's bored tone beat for beat. "I'm sure there is more."

"I'm sure you have something better to do", the Jarl's son counters.

"I do", the lad admits. "What about you?"

_In fact, so do I_. Ulfric sits down again upon his cot, tries to force the other man's presence from his mind, to focus as he had learned to do in the monastery. For the first time since his incarceration it is working, and he finds peace, his hand clenched around the amulet unconsciously, as his breathing grows deep, rhythmical, his head clears of errant thoughts, and his heart of anger.

The lad gives up eventually and leaves and Ulfric relaxes some more, giving voice to his emotions, his thoughts. In the solitude of his confinement he finds solace. It does not last.

His visitor comes back again, with a three legged stool that he places in front of the cell and sits down upon it.

Ulfric's head snaps up, the prayer that falls from his lips stuttering, dying. "What are you doing?", he enquires with bewilderment.

"Keeping you company." The soldier leans his chin into his fists, elbows braced on his knees. He does not say anything else, but remains there, quiet, unmoving and observing.

Once shattered, he cannot go back into that frame of mind he had slipped into so easily before. Ulfric would have cursed, except that he does not want the other to know how much his presence is bothering him.

The silence is unsettling, drilling under his skin, even more than the other man's overt scrutiny.

"Fine!", Ulfric is willing to give an inch if it means gaining on the long run. He is feeling twitchy and irritated, but he can see the obstinate chuff has set himself up for a long, dull wait and it is a battle Ulfric can only lose. "Where do you want me to start?"

"How about in Eastmarch?", the lad suggests, with a smile of triumph that the Jarl's son would have loved to wipe off his face. The probability was higher the other warrior would wipe the floor with _him_.

"What is it like?"

"It is the oldest city in Tamriel, a monument to all mankind, built by the mighty Ysgramor of Atmora himself, in remembrance of Yngol, his son who was slain by Sea Ghosts." Ulfric has to swallow to continue, feeling both profoundly sad and disturbed. How to do the great City of Kings justice? How to explain _home_?

He finds that he must try, never realizing how his eyes glass over with longing. "Windhelm is built against a mountain chain, from which the black stone is made of had been quarried. The outlay is rectangular, and the walls measure eighty feet at the highest point, and twelve in breadth. Two bridges span the river, broad enough for two carriages to drive side by side and above them the battlements tower. The palace is located at the northernmost point and built like a citadel. It is said Ysgramor could rule the very winds from there. Sometimes, when the weather is fair and the mists set, you can see the sea from the watchtowers." Ulfric stops to draw breath and clear his throat; he has not spoken this much since his capture. But to each Nord the place of his birth was dear.

"It has been the capital of Skyrim", he resumes, "But was sacked by the Akavri in the second Era. Now is the capital of Eastmarch, the hold over which my father rules and the capital is in Haafingar. But anybody who dares compare Windhelm's grandeur to Solitude is either blind or weak of mind."

"I wouldn't know", the blond soldier interrupts with a sigh. "Markarth is the only city I've ever been to."

"Where did _you_ grow up anyway?", Ulfric directs the talk away from himself, annoyed at the inquisitiveness. He has said too much already.

"On a farm", the lad deadpans. "That's where most farmers come from."

Talos, help him. Ulfric grits his teeth, sets his jaw and forces some civility into his voice. "Well, what's it like _on a farm_?"


	4. Chapter 4

He listens but seldom talks - and he learns; about growing cabbages, and how to curdle cheese, about the best season for sowing wheat and how to help deliver a calf.

When he is not asleep, Ulfric watches the guttering flame of his candle dance in the ever-present draft and awaits the footsteps that will announce that he has company.

It is the only way to measure the passing of time down here. The jailor arrives sometime in the morning with food and a new candle and his other visitor comes in the evening to stay for an hour or two and when he leaves Ulfric curls up on his pallet and hopes for sleep to find him before the flashbacks do.

oooo

The lad pities him, he can tell. He brings clean water and food and Ulfric begins to feel grateful, because bad as things are they would be infinitely worse without those little gifts. He knows he shouldn't make much of it; the elves used a similar tactic on those of weaker wills, those who broke under the gentle pressure of a promise – to never be familiar with the underground rooms from which the smell of blood and the screams of the tortured welled up. Those who never had to suffer the rack and brand, or the hunger, pain and humiliation like their comrades who had not sold their honour for a few rotten comforts.

Even so, the day his friend does not show up, Ulfric worries. He wonders if they are going to change their approach now, if he will be asked for some small, seemingly insignificant favour. If he will have the strength to resist.

His hand twitches at the thought and he tries to massage the cramps out of it. His knee is stiff and his shoulder has become nearly immovable, from the damp, most likely. Not even his Nord blood can keep the cold at bay, and it seeps into his very bones, a brittle, sharp ache that makes him shiver and his teeth chatter.

But worst of all is the helplessness. His anger had kept him pacing through the first days, weeks even, but Ulfric finds it more and more difficult to keep his strength up. He spends hours lying on his shabby cot, indifferent, and stares at the stone walls. Tries hard not to think that his last bath must have been months ago and to ignore the spreading itch or the lesions where he had scratched himself bloody.

Dungeons are always crawling with vermin and he wonders if he is one of them, different only because he is aware of his own fate.

oooo

The day the footsteps come again – not the cautious shuffling gait of the weary jailor who has the unfortunate task of emptying his chamber pot, but the heavy, brisk spring of a warrior – Ulfric sits up, excited all of a sudden and with his heart beating wildly. He has learned to recognize his visitor by his step during the long months with nothing else to look forward to, but to listen to a voice that was not his own, muttering prayers.

"Where have you been?" Ulfric's tone is accusing when the lad comes into view at the bottom of the stairs.

"Out", the soldier replies unfazed and Ulfric is not sure if he is happier to see the man, the lamp he lights to drive away the heavy oppression of the surrounding darkness or the bag he places next to the bars. "Training." He grins, the fierce grin at odds with his calm voice and otherwise tranquil behaviour.

Ulfric does not ask what _training_ entails; after all, it was him who bestowed the honours upon the warrior for holding back the Forsworn in battle.

"So, the Greybeards", the lad says cheerfully, sitting down on the same low stool that had taken up permanent residence next to Ulfric's cell, like they had never interrupted their talk. Like he had not abandoned Ulfric these past weeks. "Who are they?"

The Jarl's son considers not to answer, to counter his damned happy demeanour with icy silence, but his resolve quickly crumbles. The jailor never talks and the gods too keep silent. Ulfric is weary of the quiet. The only connection to the outward world that he has is the man before him, and he is willing to share any news and to come down here, for whatever reasons. Maybe he feels guilt over his own rise to fame or responsible for the man who paved the way he now walks.

There is also a simpler truth. Ulfric does not want to be alone.

He moves to the cell's front, dragging over his pallet and leans against the wall. "I see I should start at the beginning."

He takes his time thinking about how he can best explain the solemn, hard grandeur that surrounds High Hrothgar and its residents. "The Greybeards live in seclusion near the top of the Throat of the World, the great mountain of Skyrim. The tallest mountain of all Tamriel. They're masters of the Way of the Voice. Of Shouting."

The soldier's brows furrow and he looks confused; and the thought strikes Ulfric that he has to go back even further, that not everybody has grown up on the tales of old.

"What do you know about Shouts?", he asks with a sigh.

"Less than you, I guess", comes the reluctant answer.

Ulfric watches the lad's jaw set in a stubborn expression and snorts, partly in amusement and partly in disdain for such ignorance. _Too proud to admit that he knows nothing. _"That wouldn't be hard", he replies and continues, "I know more than most. I was chosen when I was just a boy to become a Greybeard myself."

He does not speak of his feelings, the pride of his father, the apprehension of being there all on his own, or the relief when his sisters accompany him. Of how the air is laden with history and can make you feel light-headed from the height or of the solace one can find in the tranquillity of the monastery.

"The Way of the Voice is an ancient, spiritual form of magic in which you project your vital essence into a Thu'um or Shout", Ulfric explains and sees as the lad rolls his eyes towards the ceiling. He has to chuckle despite the longing ache in his chest and the memories, now bittersweet.

"Quite a mouthful, isn't it?", the soldier asks with a small smile pulling at his lips and Ulfric feels himself responding in like before he resumes.

"Anybody can learn how to use the Thu'um although it would take most years before they could even attempt a single Shout."

"Most people? But not you." The lad regards Ulfric with sharp eyes. He may be uneducated, but he is clever.

"No, not me." Ulfric is not willing to discuss that. "And, of course, the Dragonborn is rumoured to be different", he diverts the talk, aware that the other man will notice, but with hope that he will not ask. He never did, so far.

The lad sits up straighter at the mention of the legendary figure. "Who's that?"

"The old tales tell of Dragonborn heroes who slew dragons and took their power. Of course, they are just that: tales."

"So they are not real?"

"Of course they are", Ulfric scoffs. "But they are also a thing of the past. Many possessed the blood of dragons back then; Wulfhearth, whom we call Ysmir, Jurgen Windcaller and, of course, Tiber Septim. Talos. The founder of the Empire and the Septim bloodline; he was the last. There has not been a Dragonborn in almost six hundred years since his death."

"How does it work? Taking a dragon's power?"

Ulfric has asked himself the very same thing on many a night. After all, the Greybeards' purpose was to find and guide the dovahkiin and many volumes on the topic filled the library, yet none could give an answer to that very question and Ulfric has read them all. "Nobody knows for sure."

"You have a theory about that?"

"Many. And I doubt you would understand a single one."

Instead of taking offence the soldier just sighs and stretches out his legs. "Says the man who asked why we plant in First Seed. Don't call others stupid if you can't feed yourself", he rebukes offhandedly, accustomed to the occasionally less than courteous replies by now.

Ulfric grunts in answer, because there is truth in that. For all his knowledge he is the one behind bars.

"Go on", the other man prompts, eager for more.

It takes the Jarl's son a while to compose himself. "It was a great honour to have been summoned", he starts, faltering, before he resumes more firmly. "The Greybeards speak to very few- in fact, they hardly speak at all, for their voices are so powerful they could bring down the very mountain they stand upon. I spent almost ten years at High Hrothgar, learning the Way of the Voice. They taught me how to Shout."

"Do you miss it?" The question stings in its accuracy and slices through Ulfric's self-imposed detachment.

"I miss a lot of things and the peace of High Hrothgar is not the least of them." It comes out more harshly than he wanted it to.

The lad actually winces. "I'm sorry."

"Save your pity." Ulfric neither wants it, nor does he need it. He had lived through worse, without the churl.

The soldier nods, but soon after he cocks his head, points his chin in the prisoner's direction. "What's wrong with your hand?"

"Nothing", the Jarl's son replies automatically, his heartbeat picking up. His visitor is too perceptive for his own good. Ulfric decides he no longer wishes for this talk to continue and gets up to withdraw into the corner that is his sleeping place.

The other man's next words stop him dead in his tracks.

"The guards tell me they heard you screaming." When there is no reaction from the prisoner, the soldier quietly adds "Every night."

After all this time one remark is all it takes to give Ulfric the cold sweats. He'd retreat further if his muscles had not locked so hard he can barely force his mouth open to hiss, "Get out!"

The lad cowers down in front of the cell under the hateful glare of the older man, still speaking softly. "You move like you're in a lot of pain." He looks around, as if seeing their surroundings for the first time. "I guess this place isn't exactly helping, either."

There is no reaction from the Jarl's son; he does not give the impression of having heard a single word.

"I'll try to put in a good word with the Jarl for you", the blond soldier finally says and Ulfric chokes on his next breath at the mention of the man who put him here in first place, his hands balling into fists.

After a long moment in which neither moves, the soldier leaves. He does not come back this time.

* * *

**AN:** I'm working on the next chapter of HT, it should be up this week.


	5. The Guard

Jarl Igmund awaits him in the stone keep, his throne flanked by his uncle and housecarl, the former sifting through a pile of papers stapled atop his knees, the latter standing so motionless he could be a statue carved from rock. Only the warrior's eyes, sharp and weary despite his age, flicker in his otherwise impassive face.

The soldier carries himself straight and proud and salutes when he comes near; he does not bow.

Igmund's fingers drum against the armrests, his silver circlet has slipped over his brow. The Jarl pushes it up with an annoyed flick of his hand and leans forward.

"Ah, the young hero of Markarth!", he greets his visitor with a smile that seems too wide to be genuine. "Have you decided upon a reward?"

"I have", the soldier replies.

"Well? What would you ask of me?"

"I would have you transfer Ulfric Stormcloak to better quarters."

The answer is not what Igmund had been expecting, the warrior knows as he watches the Jarl recoil as if struck by a blow. The stables would be a better accommodation than the dungeon, but he does not point out that bit.

"Impossible!", Raerek gasps, his documents spilling over the steward's fluttering hands and sliding from his knees to the floor, forgotten.

Igmund's face is caught in a half-snarl that is one part an attempt at keeping up his forced smile and two parts a grimace.

"Thonar thinks it is best to keep him", the Jarl begins slowly and nods, satisfied with his course. "He is too dangerous."

"And valuable", Raerek adds in a high-pitched voice and grasps at the spilled papers.

"You can't wring milk from a dead cow."

Stormcloak still has enough life in him to be kicking, but the Jarl and his advisors would not know. They never venture to the dank hole in which they have thrown the man to whom they owe their city.

The soldier has been promised a reward if it was within the Jarl's power to give and he has named his price. Igmund begins to fidget under his hard stare, visibly uncomfortable. If he has flinched at the last remark it is because they both know that the Jarl's reputation is anything but unstained. It would not be the first promise he has broken.

"He has been rotting there for over half a year", the warrior points out reasonably in hope of raising some compassion and wonders whether these men spared one thought about the future at all.

Igmund jumps at the prompt and clings to it like a drowning men would to driftwood. "I hear you have taken to visiting him."

The warrior shrugs, unperturbed. "He has some fascinating stories to tell."

"Stories." Igmund spits out the word with vehemence. His pale eyes narrow in suspicion. "Is that all?"

"In truth, I have been wondering if maybe we can win him for our side", the soldier replies and watches the rapid changes of expression flitter across the men's faces. All except for that of the housecarl, but the soldier is not worried about the fighter. It is not him he needs to convince.

"With the Thu'um the Forsworn would not be able to stand against us. We could end the skirmishes and retake Karthwarsten within the week. Then we would drive them over the Karth and towards the border. Let the other holds take care of them while we reopen out mines and trade begins to flow again." He emphasizes the last part, "We could _use_ a warrior like Ulfric."

It is a good picture he paints, he knows that. They all long for an end to the fighting, the men who actively do so more than anybody else.

But Igmund laughs without mirth. "Sure, he could Shout obscenities at me for the whole of Skyrim to hear." A pause, then, "Why so you even bother?"

"Because he is telling me about the Greybeards and his Da, and Windhelm, his home. I bet he misses them. You know what it's like to lose both, my Jarl." The statement results in a frown from Igmund, but he does not interrupt the warrior. "I am sure Ulfric would be willing to cooperate to get them back."

Igmund's fingers curl in his beard; he is listening. "Can he be swayed?", the Jarl asks slowly and seemingly reluctant to hear the answer. He is in a tight spot, he cannot keep the Jarl's son imprisoned beneath Markarth forever, because the Bear of Eastmarch might find that quite disagreeable.

The soldier has come to know war, he is not eager for another one and he knows that neither is any of the men before him. Igmund has lost his father, Karl his friend and sovereign and it is commonly known Raerek is barely above a coward. And the longer they keep Ulfric Stormcloak their prisoner, the more time they give his hostility to fester. An enemy in line for Jarldom is a grave threat indeed.

The soldier thinks before speaking, addressing his reply to the Jarl. "Let me put it this way: if Ulfric Stormcloak was presented a choice at this instant; between getting out of that cell and riding home or strangling you and being thrown back in again, your housecarl would have a hard time fighting him off right now."

Igmund falls back against his throne's backrest then, the air escaping his lungs with a disappointed sigh and he appears to slump. "Then you have your answer", the Jarl breathes softly. "He will not fight for me."

"No", the soldier agrees. "He will not. But he will do it for me. I can convince him." He is quite sure of that.

"How do you know?"

"Because he is one of those people. Who have to believe in something; and do the right thing, don't matter what it costs them." He clears his throat. "It will take a while. But an act of goodwill on your part, my Jarl, would go a long way towards convincing him."

The soldier knows he has won when Igmund mutters, "I am sure you want something for your help in persuading him."

"How about a promotion?" Being a soldier is nothing to be ashamed of, more than he would have dreamed of two years ago, but now that the doors to fame have opened he has bigger game in mind than being a Lieutenant.

"You are already in training, one day you might-" Igmund stops abruptly when his housecarl clears his throat. Something passes between them, something more than a look – unspoken, but it is the Jarl who throws up his hand in surrender. "Very well. I will – if you continue to show promise –have Karl consider accepting you as his successor. Talk to him later and you can discuss the details." It is clear Igmund considers the topic closed and the other Nord does not press for the time being. "Now where would you have me move him?", the Jarl enquires shortly, his patience at an end.

The soldier hides his smile; there is no need for him to rub in his victory. "I know a place", he suggests.


	6. His Gift

The lad appears unexpectedly after what Ulfric thinks must have been at least a week of absence. The Jarl's son has almost given up on seeing him again following the unpleasant turn their conversation had taken the last time. He thought he had resigned himself to the idea of being alone from now on, but the day he hears the familiar footsteps his heart skips a beat. He finds himself standing at the bars to watch out for the arrival, to see if it truly can be that he has not been forgotten, after all.

The soldier appears with the friendly grin Ulfric did not know he had gotten so used to. "I'm sorry for scaring you last time." He holds out a bottle of what it takes the prisoner a while to identify as mead.

Ulfric grits his teeth against the first answer that comes to his mind, clenches his hands to keep himself from reaching out. "I'm not afraid of you, Farmboy." But the knot in his chest has unravelled and the words come out with decidedly less heat than he intends them to.

"That's Officer Farmboy", the soldier shoots back and gives the prisoner a raised eyebrow and the bottle an inviting shake.

Ulfric takes the gift, as he has the others. He has gotten used to not asking himself what the price is that he will one day pay for them. The cork is sticking halfway out of the bottle's neck, but despite that it takes him two attempts before he can pull it out. His hands are shaking, he notices, but then the sharp smell hits him and he takes a deep pull from the bottle. The mead tastes sweet and sour, but also bitter and watered down, a far cry from the good quality he had enjoyed in his father's palace. It is still better than the grog the army supplies their soldiers with. Ulfric sighs in contentment and wipes away a few spilled drops with the back of his hand. A question makes him look up.

"What's the 'Way of the Vocie'?"

His visitor is, as always, sitting upon the low, three-legged stool. Ulfric ponders whether it is just his imagination that the other man's gaze is so much more intent today, his attention somehow wondering, his smile just a bit too fixed. He does not like the change, but there is no indication that it is connected to him. Their talk begins just like countless times before, with Ulfric on the floor and leaning against the wall, long legs stretched out before him. He is contemplating how to best answer, to sum up a decade of studying within a few sentences so that the lad might understand. He twirls the bottle in his hands and has another drink, and when he sets it down the rest of the liquid sloshes inside. Only then does he realize that he has downed more than half of the mead.

He has not had anything other than water since...celebrating Jytte and Fjori's engagement, Ulfric remembers. The alcohol goes straight to his head, makes him feel hot and dizzy enough that he can distance himself from the memory, push it away.

"The Way of the Voice", he attempts, only to break off again. It's more difficult than usual gathering his thoughts. Ulfric grasps at them, but they are elusive like wisps of smoke. The lad is patient, does not rush him. For that the Jarl's son feels grateful.

"It's a beautiful philosophy, but outside of the seclusion of High Hrothgar, I was never able to hold to it", he finally admits, shocked at his own candidness.

"Go on", the soldier prompts softly.

"There is a reason I rarely use my training", Ulfric says. He could Shout until he'd lose his voice, in frustration, in an attempt to break through the walls of his prison, but he does not. He does not think it is because of the explanation he offers, but the real why escapes him. "The Greybeards believe the Voice should be used only for worship of Kynareth, you see", he tells his visitor. "In that I have...fallen from their strict teaching...but I still do not feel it should be used lightly." Ulfric chuckles fondly but without much humour. "Not all of Arngeir's lecturing is wasted, it seems", he mutters under his breath.

"Arngeir?", the soldier repeats. "Is he one of the Greybeards?"

It was easy to forget the lad knew so little. "Yes. He is the oldest and most powerful, although he may not seem so." Most of the time Arngeir looked just like a cranky old man, with his lips constantly pursed in disapproval. Ulfric would have loved to tell him that his beard looked ridiculous. He might never have the opportunity to do so again and it bothers him more than it should.

This time it takes the Jarl's son longer still before he can continue again. "I doubt he has forgiven me for leaving. And for...", Ulfric's head falls against the wall, he can support its weight no longer. He should not be telling this to anybody. "For what he would consider blasphemy. Using Shouts for anything but the worship of Kynareth." He had said that already, has he not? Ulfric frowns.

In the next instant he is distracted again, the worry nagging at the back of his mind chased away. "Like bringing down Markarth's wall?"

It takes him a while to understand what the other man is talking about, but then he nods, or tries to. Any motion makes the world, already blurred at the edges, jump and jerk. In the pit of his stomach Ulfric is feeling queasy.

"So what kind of control is it if they can't even speak without bringing down their own monastery?", the soldier asks after a moment of mulling over everything Ulfric has told him. He does not appear to notice anything strange about the prisoner.

"What?"

The blond warrior just shrugs. "Last time you said the Greybeards can't speak because they might bring down their mountain. Seems like you've got the hang of it."

Ulfric does not understand. He wants to say so, but his mouth is dry, and his tongue too thick. He blinks, and watches the lad wave in and out of focus. That's...not right. But not unknown to him.

He has been drugged.

Ulfric tries to lift his arm and finds that he cannot. It is a dead weight at his side. He can feel his hands resting in his lap, cold and stiff. The dread creeps back then, a leaden weight to rest atop his chest. The soldier does not shy away from his accusing stare, does not break eye contact. He looks calm, if a bit sad. After a while Ulfric feels himself slump to the side, limp like a puppet. He tries to keep his eyes open, to force himself back into awareness, but all he can see are the bars of his prison and beyond that, the shape of boots. They are coming closer.

His heart is hammering so wildly in his throat he fears it might suffocate him. Ulfric's breath stills as he slips into unconsciousness, he abyss of his mind more dark and terrifying than the dungeon around him.


	7. The Dream

He is not sure what wakes him. Perhaps it is the dry, cracking sound of breaking bones. Or maybe it is the light that flickers across his face and makes the insides of his eyelids glow a fiery orange-red. The air is stiflingly hot and he raises one hand to protect himself from it and when he succeeds he lies still again. His temples throb painfully. The feeling intensifies and abates while tiredness threatens to overwhelm him and like the receding tide it wants to suck him back into the endless oblivion of sleep.

_His father has always warned him against coming too close to the eastern coast. He can see it before him, jagged black cliffs and teal sea, white plumes of foam dancing atop the churning waves that break upon the rocks below with a thunder like the voice of Kyne herself._

He can hear it; the roar of water and a rolling boom in the distance.

Ulfric manages to crack open one eye and blinks rapidly. His eyes burn and the tears gathering in them do nothing to ease the sting. He lets them fall freely into the furs, rough and scratching against his cheek.

When his vision clears he beholds...a fire. It is such an ordinary sight for one moment he does not understand why he cannot take his eyes off it, why he should be so enthralled by the dancing of the flames. By a small fireplace. A log splits loudly then and he flinches back as a shower of sparks goes up.

Ulfric rolls over. A bed stands in one corner with a rug spread out before it and a nightstand to hand. A desk and a chair are crammed in the space between the wall and a wardrobe. The walls are lined with shelves though most of them are empty.

He may not know where he is, but he remembers what brought him here.

Ulfric gathers his bedding and moves to sit leaning against the side of the fireplace. He has to crawl but the effort is well worth it. The stone burns against his back so hotly he has to use the fur as a protective layer in between. For the first time in months he is warm again, and it is so intense a feeling his body begin to shake, wracked with chills.

The next time Ulfric wakes, he is not alone. He knows immediately, by the watchful closeness that is accompanied by a prickling sensation at the back of his neck. He is still sitting in the nook he had wedged himself in. The Nord does not remember falling asleep, but he can hear the soothing rumble of storm he had nodded off to. It explains the confused shred of the sea that had haunted his dreams; he does not feel rested at all. Behind him, the fireplace still radiates a faint warmth, he could not have been asleep too long then.

It is time to confront his silent watcher.

Ulfric climbs to his feet laboriously and steps from behind the alcove that had hidden him from view. He is not surprised to see the lad sitting in front of his cell. The soldier is cleaning his nails with a knife, but he looks up when he hears the Jarl's son move and holds out a bottle. "Here."

Ulfric scowls at it like it was an offering from Clavicus Vile himself. He will never again touch another one of those gifts; it is far better to go without than to ever again suffer the cold stab of deceit.

"It's just water this time", the lad says with a wry quirk of his lips. When Ulfric shows no signs of moving he heaves a sigh and puts the bottle down again, then, "Suit yourself."

The soldier taps his heels against the floor and for a long while Ulfric just glowers back at him, without any intention to actually begin a conversation. "So we're back to not talking to each other?"

"You drugged me." Ulfric's tone is accusatory, and he wonders why betrayal still can take him by surprise. Does his naiveté truly know no bounds? Only he had wanted to believe that – _what_? That the other man was a friend? The notion is as absurd as it is pathetic.

The blond soldier grunts and does not contradict him, or apologize. "Yeah. Had to."

_As if he had every right to do it_. The utter lack of remorse strikes Ulfric speechless for a moment and the lad uses the opportunity to point at the room.

"Do you like it?"

"Do I like being a prisoner?", Ulfric retorts resentfully. A fancy cell does nothing to the fact that he still is a captive. "Did I enjoy having my friend's brains splattered in my face when Igmund butchered them? Do I have a fondness for rotting in his dungeon?"

"A simple 'Thank You' would suffice", the lad mumbles.

"You want me to thank you!? Thank you for the knife in my back!? I don't owe you a thing!" Ulfric did not realize he had been shouting until the last echoes of words fade away.

The other Nord stares at him for a while, taken aback, but Ulfric's feeling of victory is short-lived.

"That. Is where you are wrong." The soldier sounds irked himself as he gets to his feet.

"Where are you going?" People do not just walk out on the Jarl's son during an argument.

"Out."

"Tell Igmund on your way he can take his false kindness and may his ancestors spit down upon him in shame and the gates of Sovngarde close in his face!" Trying to buy himself back into Ulfric's good graces after he had violated the guest-right! The hubris of the man!

"Jarl Igmund had nothing to do with it", the soldier states. He sounds more tired than angry now.

He is lying, Ulfric thinks. "Then who-"

"Just the only person who has bothered to put up with you so far." And when Ulfric's face looks as blank as his mind is at the moment, the lad cries, "Me, you dimwit!" A string of words in a melodic language that the Jarl's son does not understand follows the insult.

But..., "-you _poisoned_ me."

"Don't be dramatic", the lad snaps back. "It was a sleeping draught."

"That's not the point!"

But the other man rounds on him before he can add anything. "Then what is your gods-damned problem!? You'd rather go back?"

The problem was that- And at that point his thoughts falter, and Ulfric shakes his head.

The blond warrior runs his hand over his face in exasperation, but he takes a deep breath and appears to calm down somewhat. He appears to have felled some decision. "Can you trust me?"

Ulfric bowls over, the air rushing out of his lungs. The Nord is astonished by his own reaction; he is laughing. He is laughing so hard he has to brace his hands on his knees, that his stomach cramps and tears stream down his cheeks. It is not a joyful sound and a feeling of wrongness overcomes him. He cannot pinpoint it down.

"I have put my trust in people before." Ulfric spreads his arms when he can straighten again. "Look where it got me."

The soldier looks disgusted. "The wrong people."

That much is indisputable, so Ulfric does not bother with an answer. He is weary of this exchange already. The Nord rubs the bridge of his nose and reaches up to brush back his hair and freezes in alarm. How could he not have noticed before!? "What happened to my hair?"

"I cut it", the soldier admits freely. "There was more life in it than in the rest of you. And not the good kind." He must have seen Ulfric's look of shock and ads, "It's just hair, it'll grow back."

Maybe. In consideration of all that has happened it is just a pinprick. But one that stings nonetheless. Ulfric touches his face hesitantly to assess the damage done. He finds out that his beard had been cut and his hair is short enough that it stands up.

"Actually", the lad continues and his intonation catches Ulfric's attention despite the numb resignation that spreads through the other Nord. "I wanted to tell you that we'll draw you a bath if you want to. Thought you might like that." He sounds defensive.

He would. Divines, he cannot even express how much he wants to. Ulfric's skin itches at the very though.

"Well? You want to get cleaned up or stand here and hurl insults at me?"

Another trick? Or is this for real? If they had wanted to harm him, he had been unconscious long enough. He knows that. Knowing changes nothing about how he feels. The blond soldier waits for his answer, face unreadable. He has asked for Ulfric's trust. But the Jarl's son is the wrong man and has less to give in that regard than any other. Ulfric dry-swallows, takes the plunge. Just one last time. "Please."

The lad must have seen something more and his own expression softens in response. "Alright. I'll tell the others."

He is kept under close watch, but not constrained as he is lead out and through several corridors to another room, still underground.

Ulfric still hates tubs, but when he sees the steaming one he cannot get in fast enough. His shaved head and chin feel wrong in every way, though he cannot deny a certain gladness that the felted, filthy mess of hair is gone. The Nord tries not to dwell on how it can be seen as a symbol of his defeat. Thralls of old had their heads shorn. But then so did many soldiers in the Legion. He will regrow his warrior's braids when he gets out of here; Ulfric avows, and then he will never allow for himself to be captured alive again.

He goes through two bars of soap and three refills of the tub before the water running from his body is mostly clear. By then his guards have relaxed sufficiently. Two of them are talking to each other, something about morning drills. The third brings him clothes when he climbs out of the bath; grey woollen trousers and a white linen shirt. It smells of lavender and mountain pine and is too wide in the shoulders though the length is about right.

The lad gives Ulfric a wide smile. "Better?"

It is. Ulfric nods the other Nord turns to his comrades, satisfied.

Ulfric has his axe out of its hoop in an instant. The soldier behind Ulfric lunges forward with a shouted warning and Ulfric sidesteps and elbows him in the face. The redheaded Nord runs into the wooden brim and falls over and into the tub with a splash and a gurgle. His friends draw their blades.

\- HAAL VIIK

Three swords are sent flying across the room, and the only one with a weapon still in his hands is Ulfric.

"Shit!" One of the men dives after his sword, even as the last soldier scrambles out of the water, spluttering and soaked to the skin.

FUS

Ulfric will need his breath for more, but he feels a savage satisfaction as he watches the Nords fly and crash into the wall nonetheless.

One of them remains down, the other is visibly dazed; and _this is his chance_.

His heart is pounding, the wild abandon of battle burns in his veins. Take them out before anybody notices and he might yet fight his way out – or die in the process. _Victory or Sovngarde_. Defeat is not an option.

Ulfric can feel the Thu'um build up in his throat, the power more ferocious than that of the lightning storm raging outside, but just as deadly. The Nord draws breath.

And then the farmboy steps into the way of his killing blow, unarmed save for a fool's courage and a look of determination.


	8. Of Prisons

_No!_ That wasn't supposed to happen!

Ulfric's breath catches in his throat, on the very verge of unleashing a power so fierce it has ripped apart armoured men before. He only has to utter a word, only one, and freedom will be within his grasp. The Nord can feel the vertigo that comes from the rush; power, excitement, _battle, _has already completed the Shout in his mind even if his body has yet to catch up.

The lad stands unflinchingly in Ulfric's way with his arms half spread out, as if he could be a bulwark against the raw force of his Voice just as he had been against the tide of the Forsworn. The Jarl's son notices that the soldiers who aren't staring at their commander do so at him with wide, fearful eyes, the knowledge of what will happen to them written on their pale faces.

Nobody moves.

For one fleeting, eternal moment nothing happens.

Instead of taking his retribution as he has envisioned doing countless times since his capture, Ulfric finds that he cannot breathe, not in for the air he has already drawn into his lungs and not out, because he cannot give up on his advantage, his greatest weapon. Not after everything he has gone through.

He tightens his hold on the axe in his hand, is aware of the wire on its grip bite into his palm. His own pulse is pounding in his ears, loud in the quiet of the underground room where only the disturbed water gently sloshes against the tub's rim.

It has to be now- or never.

The lad takes a cautious half-step forward, the palms of his hands turned outward in anticipation of a blow that never comes.

With rising dread that Ulfric comes to understand that his Voice has deserted him, the Shout stuck somewhere between his chest and his throat, like the bone of a fish. It is suffocating him. Dazzling white spots begin to swim in the periphery of his vision, as if he were to pass out.

Another step brings the blonde warrior closer still, his amber eyes locked on Ulfric's. In the semi darkness they are twin pools of obsidian; hard and sharp, but brittle.

The warrior's movement has changed something about the atmosphere in the room. Ulfric no longer feels like he is the eye of the storm wielding Kyne's own might. Instead a precipice has opened up at his feet and he cannot bring himself to leap, feet rooted to the ground.

The red-haired soldier picks up on it first. The man's head turns from the Jarl's son to his officer and as quick as a flash he jumps up and sprints out of the room.

Ulfric watches him disappear around the corner, cold clutching at the heart that beats too fast in his chest, like the wings of a caged bird seeking escape. He still has a chance. _He can do it if he acts now._

"Move!"

The lad regards him with sympathy, but his answer is a shake of his blonde head.

This is not how Ulfric wants this to end, but he cannot, will not, relent. "I will not be held here like some criminal", he says and despite his best effort his emotions colour his disobeying voice. It is thick with desperation and frustration in equal measure and the frantic need to get out before the walls close in around him again.

"Do you even know which way is out?", the other man asks. There is no apparent malice in his tone, no anger. Just the faintest hint of sadness.

Ulfric clenches his teeth when his stomach lurches and his gaze darts towards the doorway despite himself. A part of him screams for him to _move_, while another has frozen in the face of that simple statement, thoughts reeling. He has seen some of the passages on their brief walk from his new cell to this room, all of them deserted.

He knows that Markarth is built upon an ancient Dwemer dwelling and he has been told that he is being held beneath the city. How many corridors are there? How long will he wonder their dark? Or is it all just a trick to install doubt in his heart? Ulfric shifts his weight restlessly. He remembers that he cannot trust the blond Nord, not after he had betrayed his confidence not a day ago.

Just then a tremor passes through the building. The ceiling trembles under the weight of countless feet; more soldiers rushing to their comrades' aid.

And Ulfric knows that he has, in the end, run out of time even as he cannot comprehend how he could have let it come to this.

When the guards come running, close enough their voices can be heard – if not understood – through the thick stone walls, the lad turns his head to address his men. "Tell them to get back to their posts."

"A-"

He lad rounds on them, no longer the amiable farmboy who had ribbed a man who couldn't be further apart from him in rank, but the man Ulfric had seen a glimpse of at the battle for Markarth. "I said. Get. Out!"

Ulfric watches with dejectedly as the soldiers jerk into action. They are more afraid of their comrade than they are of him.

It leaves Ulfric and the other Nord alone in the room and after the initial tumult, the noise from outside dies down. The Jarl's son does nothing to acknowledge the change in their fortunes. He feels disconnected from everything that is happening around him, oddly assured in knowing his fate is sealed.

It serves him right for being too indecisive, for his will being too weak.

The other Nord finally closes the distance between them, still weary.

Ulfric looks away.

He does not wish to behold triumph on the other man's youthful face, or, even worse, the sympathy he suspects he might find.

There is the discarded towel, hastily dropped and his old rags which are lying on the floor in a puddle made of spilled water and suds. Next to them is a torch, still burning, its light reflected in the dark pool. One spot becomes two as his eyes fail to focus any longer and two a million when the world blurs, a broken kaleidoscope of iridescent lights and dark shadows.

A hand lands heavily on Ulfric's forearm, rough warm fingers, slightly splayed. Though blind he senses the other man's closeness, expects a blow from one of his fists or some other form of fight - because isn't he the one holding a weapon? Instead his hand is pushed downwards, gently but insistently, until both arms hang at his sides. This is not the moment he gives up. It had happened a long time ago, it had just taken him this long to realize it.

Ulfric lets go.

The weapon slips out of his dead hand.

It never hits the ground; the lad catches it and when he lets out a shaky breath Ulfric thinks that maybe he was not the only one terrified.

_"You're pathetic." _

Ulfric does not know why her words, smooth and cool, come back to haunt him at this instant, but they shatter something inside him. He will never be free.

If only the Gods were merciful enough to grant him solitude in the moment of his greatest weakness, but Ulfric is not foolish enough to pray to the Divines for kindness.

When the first and only sob he allows to pass his numb lips is torn from the depths of his chest, he senses more than sees the lad move. There are hands, first on his stiff shoulders, then moving lower, over his back and up again.

Ulfric's chin bumps against something hard and cold and comes to rest atop it. The metal warms quickly beneath the fever of his skin.

He allows the touch, hypnotized by the steady strokes that leave a trail of warmth over his back and neck and takes what comfort he can find in the strength of the embrace. The rise and fall of his chest is slow and steady now, for he had learned to shed tears without any ragged breath betraying him. He knows the silent weeping as only somebody who is constantly being watching for any sign of vulnerability does.

oooo

An indeterminable amount of time later a heavy arm around his shoulders steers him back to his cell.

He hates it, this cruel kindness. If he was attacked, if somebody tried to overwhelm him or drag him back by force, he would fight back through sheer force of habit. Then at least he would have something to fight _against_.

Ulfric understands now. It is not the bars or the soldiers waiting outside, or the high walls made of stone. It is him.

His failure, his once-strong body, now gaunt and weak, his voice – or the lack thereof.

He cannot use it against the only person who has treated him like a human being.

The prison is one of his own making.

* * *

**AN**: Happy New Year!


	9. The Soldier

**AN:** Dear Guest, thank you very much for your kind review. It has been great fun filling out the blanks of the game, and I am glad that somebody else enjoys the fruits of my overactive imagination.

* * *

The soldier knows he has evaded death closely enough that he imagines he can feel the cold gust of it passing him by.

Over a year and a half ago he had left his home with thoughts of glory clouding his sight, and the desire to free Markarth and to protect his family burning hotly in his heart. He joined the army of both professional soldiers and volunteers, men and women united under the banners of a legend of the Great War.

Now he is holding not only his breath, but a man broken by the trials life has put him through. He suspects that there is more to it than the imprisonment, even if that would be beyond enough to wear away the spirit of the most resilient of men.

The farm boy remembers Ulfric from the battlefield, where he commanded the army from atop his snow white charger. He had seemed taller than any living man had a right to be, and as grand as one of the heroes of old, of whom the lad had only heard tales when he visited the city and managed to convince his father to let them stay at an inn, just for the one night.

Now the soldier can feel the damp soak through his collar and marvels that he isn't knocking on the gates to Sovngarde right now, calling out to Shor to let him in.

He had firsthand witnessed Ulfric Stormcloak shout down Markarth's walls – and they are of Dwemer make, hewn from blocks of solid granite, fifty feet tall and ten thick at least. What chance does a man of flesh and blood stand against such destructive force?

None.

But he has to try, for the sake of his friends who he isn't going to let die because of a mistake he is responsible for.

'Courage is the true shield of a warrior', his weapon master is fond of saying. Funny that he should remember it now, because the Nord certainly does not feel any when he faces down the prisoner. Maybe at least his comrades will leave this dungeon alive, if he can just buy them enough time. That is why he sends them out at the first chance that presents itself.

At the time there is still no doubt in his mind that Ulfric considers him a betrayer of trust and will seek out retribution for the incident with the poisoned mead. Minutes later the scale tips and topples, and he is holding the other man in his arms and offers what meagre comfort he can give.

That he can actually do so leads him to suspect that maybe Ulfric did not want their deaths after all. He does not know what to do with the knowledge, and puts such thoughts aside for later contemplation.

Whereas mere moments ago the air had been leaden with tension so thick, it could rival the crackling static of the storm outside, the strain is now slowly dissipating, slipping away like the spilt water through fissures in the floor. As it becomes less, feeling returns to the warrior's limbs. Rigidity gives away to relief, and he savours the sharp tang of sweat, bile and joy that is survival. Some deeply ingrained sense tells him that the other man will not attempt another escape and he mouths a silent prayer to the Gods to thank them for overlooking him today.

Ulfric isn't leaning into him by any means, but he isn't resisting the touch either. When the soldier pulls back to look into the other man's face, he finds his gaze dull. Vacant. He looks defeated.

It's not a victory, however, for the warrior who slings one arm across the blond Nord's shoulders – half to support the prisoner, and half to make sure that he will come along.

Ulfric does so without a fuss.

Back in the cell the blond Nord sinks down on his cot as if his legs no longer had the strength to support him, and the soldier locks them both in. Although he wants nothing more than to get away and get a stiff drink of something that will chase the slight tremor out of his hands, he instead he kneels to light a fire.

A quiet murmur behind him, the words spoken so softly he can barely make them out, compels him turn to the other man.

"Why did you forsake me?"

"What?" He didn't, he is still here.

But the words were not meant for the guard. Ulfric's fingers rub endless circles against the bronze amulet he had been given. With his hair cut short and in the dim, flickering light he looks vaguely familiar in a painful way.

It takes the soldier a while to figure out why. When he does, he wearily sinks down next to the other Nord, whose breathing is still irregular and laboured. He isn't sure why he stays when any sane person would run. Perhaps because it simply is what he has learned is right. He barely misses his home anymore, and the family he had, despite his vows to take care of them, left behind, and swallows down the guilt.

The lad licks his lips, searches for something to say.

"Is this about the hair? It'll grow back, you know? Hey." He tries to tilt his head to catch Ulfric's eyes, but the other man is blindly staring ahead, so he settles for gripping the Nord's shoulder instead. "Please tell me it's not the beard."

The light-heartedness falls flat when the only answer he receives is the echo of his own words, quickly swallowed by the thick walls of stone. Ulfric seems to have completely withdrawn into himself. The guard isn't sure what urges him to touch his palm to Ulfric's damp brow, but when he does it is to find that the blond Nord is burning up. The warrior curses in a rongue soft and melodic and shakes his head. "You're running a fever."

He sighs and gets to his feet, promising to get the healers. One finger points at the cot. "You stay here."

He feels stupid for saying that in the same instant the words leave his mouth. How did he end up being the one in charge of the prisoner? He curses the impulse that had prompted him to petition the Jarl in a moment of insanity and then he wishes that there was somebody here to take charge, somebody who knew what to do and what to say. Or that maybe he were somebody else – not a lad but a man who was older and wiser and maybe just a bit more indifferent. But there is no such person here, and so the soldier leaves with the brisk stride of the purposeful.

He has a duty to perform.


	10. Healing

Once, Ulfric had fallen to the fever of his own aspirations and it had scorched him. The fire that consumes him now stems from a different ailment; not born of the mistakes of a green boy, but of those of a man already disillusioned with life.

As he burns, he dreams: of the war, of friends that he had known, their footsteps swallowed by the lush grass growing in the meadows of Sovngarde, and of home and his mother whom he has last seen over a decade ago.

When he wakes, a priestess of Kynareth touches cold fingers to his temples and for one blessed moment he does not know where he is.

He drifts away again before he can remember.

The Jarl's son sleeps through the rest of the night and the days that follow, waking only to slurp the hot broth the guards bring him. He cannot bring himself to touch any of the bread that accompanies his meals, but greedily drinks all the tepid water he can swallow. For a brief while it eases the dryness in his throat, douses the inferno raging within. However, the ache never subsides entirely, only growing worse as the illness takes its toll.

Ulfric has known the fever of infected battle wounds and the delirium induced by constant pain and malnourishment, but he has never been brought this low by sickness.

His bones hurt worse than normal as shivers wreak his emaciated frame and he is happy to fall into unconsciousness. In one of his lucid moments the warrior finds out that he has been brought more furs, and he is too tired and too weak to be ashamed upon realizing that he needs them all.

Somebody is thoughtful enough to light a fire and to leave a set of spare clothes on the foot of his bed. Ulfric dons the clean linen garments and discards the ones drenched in sweat. His gaze falls upon the desk, stocked with quills and an inkpot and he lurches for the seat.

Later he will not recall the letter he writes to father, full of angry words at being left here, forgotten. Only a scrap of charred parchment remains of the accusation after he tosses it into the fire, and on the morn it is picked up and thrown away by a guard who never spares a single thought for its content. It is probably better this way.

Eventually the fever breaks.

Ulfric is not sure he will ever find the strength to rise from his cot again. In time he does, but only because he has to.

'It will take time to return to his old self,' he tells himself and doesn't quite believe the lie. Here, in this pit, he will never heal.

Such bleak thoughts threaten to drown him in despair and to escape tries to find solace in old habits. He withdraws into himself to pray, to find the calm necessary to meditate.

The warrior thinks that the isolation might actually be helping. After all, it is nothing new to him.

But he is too restless and too riled to find the peace he seeks. His old master had always berated him for his passion. At least he isn't here when his former pupil tries to Shout and finds that he cannot.

In a fit of rage, Ulfric rips off the amulet he is carrying and tosses it away, cursing the Gods for abandoning him.

In the next instant he is standing at the bars, grasping for the trinket of which he saw but a glimmer as it flew to disappear in the shadows. But the small bronze pendant is lost to him and in his helpless anger he punches the wall.

Fuelled by his fury the strike feels like it should cave in the stonework, but instead something crunches in his hand and Ulfric has to choke back a yell of pain. He kicks a trunk, because it is either that or giving in to the urge to scream until his lungs are emptied of air, and he keeps kicking it because he needs a different sensation to distract him from the pain.

When it passes in favour of a ceaseless throbbing, he is feeling too worn out to do anything but sink down on his cot and bemoan his fate.

And worst of all: he only has himself to thank for this predicament.

It is like that that his visitor finds him, and Ulfric really isn't braced for the jovial greeting he receives.

"How are you?"

The Jarl's son tries to answer only for the power of speech to abandon him. Such a simple question to provoke so many emotions. He would like to think that the concern he imagines hearing is genuine. Ulfric coughs and clears his throat before he tries again. He is hoarse when he manages to rasp out, "My voice." It still hasn't recovered after his illness.

"Is this a bad time to thank you for not shouting me to pieces?" the lad asks. Uninvited, he lets himself into the cell to sit in the only chair there is.

Why didn't he? A part of Ulfric wants to think that he is better than that. That he would not use the Voice against an unarmed man. He never gets to answer.

"What happened to your hand?" the other man asks, bending forward.

Ulfric snatches his hand away, but not quickly enough. He looks up to see a frown forming on the blond soldier's brow.

"This needs to be set. I can get the priestesses. They can heal-"

"No magic," Ulfric replies.

The lad throws his head back. "Mara have mercy; Stendarr give me patience, and Talos strength," he intones in the same breath. "How did that happen?"

"I lost it." He realizes a split second too late and bites his tongue.

The other man appears confused by that statement. "Lost what?"

He does not know what exactly he was referring to either, only that he has not meant to reveal even that tiny detail. The anger swells and breaks free before Ulfric can do anything to hold it in. The lad is undeserving of his ire, but conveniently he is here to be hit with the full force of it. "My fucking virginity, you skeeverbrain!"

"And here was thinking about your common sense of self-preservation," the soldier bites back and both men refuse to look at one another in the uncomfortable silence that follows.

Ulfric cannot fathom why he feels like the loser of this particular battle when the other man is the first to speak again.

"Will you let me see it?"

A part of the blond man screams at him to never show his weakness, but he knows that now is not the time he can let the past govern him. He cannot simply leave the injury be.

Blood from Ulfric's split knuckles has painted rivulets of red over the back of his hand, yet it does not stop the lad from reaching out. When the Jarl's son flinches back, he slows his movement, opts to hold up Ulfric's palm with but one gentle finger.

The soldier squints, bringing his face closer to the digits. "Doesn't look broken."

His fingers stick out at a wrong angle and he cannot move them. Ulfric is sure they are broken, when the lad grabs them and wrenches.

Ulfric freezes, streams of cold sweat running down his back. He couldn't make a sound if he wanted to, because his heart has taken residence where his throat used to be.

After another brief inspection, the lad seems pleased with his handiwork. "I'll get you a bowl of water. Seems too late, but maybe they won't swell any worse." He gets up and leaves and Ulfric allows himself for the pent-up breath to escape his paralyzed lungs in a rush.

He can move his fingers a bit, and the feeling of wrongness is gone. The pain was surprisingly quick to abate. It is not the reason why he is shaking, either. He manages to get his breathing back under control by the time the other man comes back.

"How did you know?" Ulfric asks quietly. The numbing effect of the cold water is most welcome and he is in dire need of something to keep his mind busy.

The lad shows him his own left. The small and ring finger are crooked and when he makes a fist, it becomes obvious that he cannot bend them. "Broke 'em twice. Dislocated them more often than I can count. Blasted shield keeps getting knocked against them. Got them healed at the temple, but... they're pretty stiff. Hurts like a bitch when something moves around the wrong way." He sounds like he knows what he is talking about.

Ulfric nods. He cannot resist bending his fingers though he knows that he shouldn't. "You could have warned me."

"This way's quicker."

Ulfric knows he is not talking about the setting itself.

"Thank you." He understands that he should be grateful for the swift resolution, but in his heart he cannot bring himself to feel it any more than he can imagine what his reaction to what had just happened would have been a couple of months ago. And yet...

All he wants is to throw up. And Ulfric realizes that he will not be fine, maybe not ever, but in a while he will be able to pretend to again.

The urge is slow to pass, though.

"If you need me...," the lad says and sounds like he already regrets this decision, "Just call."

Ulfric resolves not to let those ever become an issue. He is sick of his life being in the hands of others. It is time to wrench it back. He has allowed his trip of self-pity to go on for too long.

"And don't go punching any more walls."

Yet he is glad that he did. Ulfric studies the patterns his own dried blood has painted his skin with. He is far from healed, but he knows that he has come out of far worse – not for the better, no. But he has become harder, like tempered steel. So many things try to chip away at him, he isn't sure of what will remain of him by the time they are done with him. If he will even recognize the man that will be left to emerge once all this is over. But he avows that that man will be the one they will break themselves upon.

If the Jarl of Markarth thinks he can subdue him, then Ulfric will make him rue the day he took on the heir of the Bear of Eastmarch.


	11. A Friend

I edited the former chapter, there were too many small things I was unhappy with.

* * *

The determination is born of the discovery that there is a flame burning in him still, unquenched by the trials of the past months. It may be weak, like that of a bonfire slowly suffocating under the pile of ash that has been allowed to accumulate around it for too long, but by its light Ulfric catches the first glint of something he almost does not recognize as belonging to himself: strength. He isn't quite prepared to accept the find for what it is, but at the same time he cannot but soar with the knowledge that it is undeniably real; oh-so-tantalizingly out of reach, albeit indisputably _there_.

Maybe it always has been. Maybe he was too afraid to look into his own heart for fear of what he might find there. It is a strange feeling, weighing himself against his conscience to find himself... not adequate, no. But not quite the opposite, either.

He had good reasons for coming to free the Reach, and he has never obtained the level of cowardice necessary to let hindsight change his motives. Ulfric had never been a courtier, or an opportunist, and the hard path is something to be weathered, not evaded, and obstacles overcome, not skirted.

As the hours stretch into days, he refuses to give in. Against insurmountable odds he will fight, to his last breath. Nothing less is acceptable.

If the Jarl of Markarth thinks he can subdue him, then Ulfric will teach him a lesson on what it means to be a true Nord.

Contrary to what he has been told, he does not take the lad up on his offer of help. He has been dependent on others for too long, has let their actions shape his fate whilst he stood by, an impotent onlooker. No more. He had enough education in tactics and has a rudimentary understanding of court politics to know that this game is being played on somebody else's terms. But while he cannot set his own board, he can anticipate and plan ahead for when the time for his own turn comes.

First though he will need a clear head.

Ulfric recalls his training, and the failed attempt at finding inner peace from a few days ago. This time, when his breath deepens, becomes rhythmic, it is as if a veil has been lifted from in front of his eyes. He sees his mistakes clearly as he settles one the bare stone floor, forsaking any comfort. This time, when he meditates, he does it right.

With his thoughts free to roam even the bars of his prison lose meaning. It is not only his predicament that Ulfric contemplates. He reflects on the loss of his Voice, and on words with – not necessarily _of_ – power, even some that he had never used or known to be part of a Shout before. Some, he believes, he is on the verge of understanding.

The newfound wisdom comes at a price, the knowledge of himself cold and merciless.

Instead of pursuing it further, of torturing himself by picking at that scarcely scabbed wound he once more tries to console with the Nine. With Talos first, whom he apologizes to for his earlier doubt, and next with Kyne, the wild goddess whose presence he can barely feel here, in this manmade prison of stone.

Like before, no heavenly voice rises in answer to his prayers, but in their silence Ulfric reads not the gods' indifference, but senses that it comes from anticipation, imagines he can see the stillness of one waiting with baited breath.

The Nord knows he will need to prove himself worthy of their blessings once more.

He would like to blame his previous fits of rage on his fever, on the illness, but true to his newfound course, he does not. Instead, the warrior strives to do better.

He begins by petitioning a man, with a formal invitation this time, written and sealed, though the latter is done with the print of his bare finger and not with a signet ring.

The soldier, who Ulfric would like to believe had needed no other incentive but his own sense of right and wrong to stand by a wronged prisoner, appears to waver between confusion and amusement at he writ.

The Jarl's son courteously offers him a seat, as if his little cell were his father's own court. As if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

The other man's lips quirk, but he grants Ulfric this little piece of dignity and if he seems surprised to be treated civilly for a change, he does not comment, allows the Jarl's son to keep up appearances, and thanks him for the offered seat.

For that alone Ulfric is almost willing to call him friend.

"I don't think you've finished telling me about yourself," the soldier hesitatingly starts their conversation, the way he had back in the days when he had been Ulfric's only company, his anchor to sanity, barely more than a voice in the dark.

"I told you nearly all about High Hrothgar," Ulfric replies truthfully.

"Yes, I know more about a mountain than I ever thought I would," the other man snorts, yet his body language betrays him as he leans forward, eager for the tale he knows is coming. Had Ulfric truly grown that predictable in his isolation?

"So what came after?"

"The Great War." The topic weights heavily on his mind still. "I couldn't stand missing it," Ulfric admits, and because they are still talking about his apprentice days, he continues, "I often think about High Hrothgar. It's very disconnected from the troubles down here. But that's why I couldn't stay, and why I couldn't go back. I suppose the Greybeards care about Skyrim's troubles, _in their way_, but I needed to do something about them. I'm sure Arngeir would call it one of my many failings."

"I don't think I like him," the lad replies easily. "How's the hand?"

"Better," Ulfric responds absent-mindedly, his hand curling into a fist and relaxing with the rhythm of a newfound habit. He is not sure what to make of the other man's remark, has spent many an hour trying to disentangle the complicated knot that are his own feelings on the matter.

Arngeir, the man he had known since his sixth nameday, who had smiled like the grandfather he had never known the first time Ulfric had mastered the barest whisper of his first Shout. Arngeir, who had been his teacher and mentor for a decade, and for whom he would have done nearly anything if only it meant a rare word of praise. Arngeir, whose strict upbringing had vexed his adolescent self into tears sometimes, and a nod from whom could conjure a feeling of pride and accomplishment beyond any other in the boy Ulfric had been.

Arngeir, who had told him that if he ever set foot outside of the monastery he would never be welcomed back again.

Ulfric does not know whether to feel regret for leaving, anger at being judged for only doing what over years of teaching had been ingrained into him as _right_, or sadness at the old man's near-sightedness.

In the end, the anger prevails. He has spent more time cultivating it.

"I did not know you had a medic's education," Ulfric steers the topic back to safer waters, away from himself.

"I got to study field medicine and a lot of stuff on healing," the soldier says easily. "It's part of the housecarl training."

"Congratulations." It does not come easily, but once said, the word hangs between them, demands attention.

"I got you to thank for it, to be honest," the other man confesses quietly.

A debt surely can be used to his advantage. But the events of the past have shown Ulfric that he is not the one holding the cards. His fate is in the hands of the gods and a man he is sure has his own agenda. This is the Reach, after all and here trust is often repaid with a knife in the back. Point in case being the situation that brought him here.

And yet... there were no repercussions for his breakout attempt.

Could he be wrong? He has always been the worst judge of character. Ulfric wishes Galmar was here.

What if this was all some plot? The gifts, the new cell, the lad's patience in the face of his obstinacy, the questions after his wellbeing. Was he spying for Igmund? Or Thonar?

'Talos,' Ulfric prayed, 'What should he do?' A sign, he needed... something. Anything.

"Oh, I forgot last time." The soldier pulls a small object out of a pouch that hangs at his belt. "Here, you lost this."

Ulfric looks at the glimmer of what first seems to be gold, but then turns out to be only cheap bronze hanging from a leather cord, stomach churning. Lost, the lad had said. There is no way the other man truly believes it, but again he is willing to pretend – for Ulfric's sake.

And had he not just asked for a sign? Was this one? Or was it simply a coincidence?

Ulfric cannot stop himself from reaching out anymore than he can stop himself from drawing breath. Smooth metal touches the tips of his scarred fingers, warm where it should have been cool.

_Calculations of risk versus reward; he had learned those in the Legion. Besides, what does he have to lose? _

Ulfric closes his palm over the amulet, its edges worn smooth and not at all painful, despite the force with which he clenches the axe-shaped pendant. He avows not to lose it again.

"I don't think we were ever introduced properly," Ulfric says, licks his chapped lips and forces himself not to look away.

He receives a half-hearted shrug before the answer. "I'm Argis. But you already know that."

Yes, he did know that. But he is also set on doing this the proper way and thus he replies, "It has been a pleasure to make your acquaintance." _I wish it was under more pleasant circumstances and not with me rotting in a cell. _

If this man should turn out to be a friend, the only one in this pit of vipers, then upon his return to Windhelm Ulfric will make him a lord in his own right.

Argis snorts as if amused with the unvoiced thought and elbows him in the side.

Ulfric rubs the spot and frowns. "What?"

"It's your turn."

"Oh." The lapse brings a hot flush to his face. "Ulfric– ," he falters for a brief moment, winces inwardly at what usually follows, –Jorgnir, firstborn son to Jarl Hænir, Thegn of Windhelm and heir to the Hold of Eastmarch.

The formal titles ring of falsehood, bestowed upon him at a time when none of them held meaning anymore. They do not reflect who he is, neither do they tell of anything but the duties he will one day perform; not of his ideals, not of his love for the land of his birth and its people, nor his pride in the power of his Voice.

"Stormcloak," Ulfric decides, for the man he now has become both in his and in the eyes of the world.

They shake hands. The angle is wrong and the contact feels awkward, but the soldier grins.

"Nice to meet you, Ulfric. Wish it weren't in this shithole."


	12. The Game

This shithole, as Argis had so aptly named it, becomes Ulfric's little kingdom. He presides over his court of one, ruling over no subjects - instead of such he has an ally, even if their allegiance stands on the shaky legs of a newborn colt.

Over the following two years it grows in strength, and with it Ulfric also witnesses his friend change. From the country boy who had first visited him out of a bewildering mix of curiosity and the inane drive to speak to the man he back then held responsible for his brother's death, the blond Nord matures into a warrior Ulfric himself would be proud to see in the looking-glass. Instead there is a pale ghost staring back at him, with too-gaunt cheeks and burning eyes he never dares to meet.

While he is stuck in his prison, his wings cropped, Argis rises through the ranks in the same manner an eagle soars towards the highest peaks; seemingly without effort, and faster than Ulfric can keep track of. His friend now wields the kind of authority he had first witnessed in the Legion. A nod from the soldier is enough to send the prison ward running, caught somewhere mid-way between a salute and the need to obey.

The two remaining men share a chuckle over the jailor's comic retreat.

Argis gifts Ulfric with a childlike grin that tells the Jarl's son that he thoroughly enjoys every second of his command. He uses his own set of keys to let himself into the cell.

Once, a long-enough time ago that he probably does not think about it anymore, he had caught Ulfric looking, hunger for the freedom denied to him burning in the blond's eyes.

"Don't," he had said, "I can take you." Almost like he wished Ulfric would give him reason to prove it.

He didn't back then, lest he find it to be true.

He doesn't now, because he has learned to heed the counsel of a man who has never slighted him with falsehood.

Ulfric offers his guest a seat at the table, and the jar with the remaining oatmeal cookies, although he is secretly glad when his friend waves them off.

"There's more where that came from, you know?" the soldier tells him, eyes crinkling with merriment.

Ulfric mutters something that was fully meant to be incomprehensible, and ignores the boom of laughter as they settle for their daily game. The routine has become comfortable, like an overstuffed chair beside the fireplace one sinks into at the end of a long, stormy day to enjoy a good book and a cup of mulled wine.

He wins the roll for first move.

Argis grumbles about cheating, though it is in good mature.

If he were to rig the game in his favour, Ulfric would make sure that he won. He twists the white stone between his fingers, taking his time to come up with a strategy, and then sets it down in down on the middle field.

xxxx

The board is painted in circles, one inside the other, four in total. Two crossing lines link them together. Ulfric knows the game as Miller's Maze, Argis insists on calling it Hens and Foxes.

The rules are the same.

Two months to the day they last saw each other, there comes an evening when Ulfric does not recognize the footsteps that announce the coming of a visitor. And he has become good at that - or rather there were never many people willing to come pay him a visit in first place, so he has learned to distinguish between those already limited choices.

When he steps into the light, Ulfric immediately detects that there is something wrong with the way his friend holds himself. Gone is the energy from his step, the predatory lightness that has always been present despite the man's considerable bulk. Gone is also his armour. Only a shirt fails to hide the blood-stained bandages underneath.

Argis has apparently decided to grow a beard as well. Ulfric thinks that it suits him.

"What happened?" is what he asks.

The other Nord collapses on his bed rather than sits down. "Nearly got myself gutted." He raises the bottle of mead that Ulfric has not noticed before to his lips and chugs down half its contents in one go, offering Ulfric what's left.

He declines. "You seem to need it more than I do."

Argis does not challenge the truth of the words, but finishes off the drink and shifts to make his position easier on his injured side. "Good news is you're about to have a lot more company," he says, and it would have been a touching statement, had he not followed it up by, "I can't fucking fight like this."

With anybody else the confession of a disability like this would indicate weakness.

Argis radiates all the vulnerability of an irked boar.

Ulfric decides to poke the beast some more. "Consider doing something else then with your time," he voices his unwanted opinion, "You might find the benefits of a little education appealing."

Argis has never insulted Ulfric's heritage, but in that moment he must have come close. Instead, all he offers as response is a grunt and a rude gesture.

"Do not exert yourself on my behalf," Ulfric cannot resist throwing in, but he tempers his words with a nod towards the shelf. "Fancy a game?" he asks.

Argis grunts again, a more agreeable sound this time. "Sure."

Ulfric has to blow the dust from the board, but then it is as if no time had passed between this match and the last. He watches his friend's black stones eat away at his, until the outcome of the game is decided.

"Again?" Winning the first round seems to have taken some of the edge off. Argis appears to be enjoying himself.

Ulfric answers by setting the board, spinning it around to change colours. "Until I beat you."

His friend takes the comment in stride. "You won't," he assures the Jarl's son.

"We shall see." This has become a game cantered around the other game they are playing. One in which Ulfric pretends that each time he loses he does so out of a greater design; every defeat foreseen and merely another step in the ulterior plan that shall eventually lead him to victory.

"Want to bet on it?" Most days Argis is happy to keep up the illusion. Today is not one of them.

"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage." There is little he can bet, and fewer he is willing to. The right to refuse is more like a privilege for a man in his position. He wishes not to exercise it until absolutely necessary.

His friend makes the decision easier. "I'll bet you twenty pull-ups."

"What kind of a bet is that?" They both know Ulfric is in no physical condition for any kind of work-out. Neither it seems is the other man, so at least the odds are even.

"One you're going to lose," Argis replies flatly and moves his piece to cut off Ulfric's. "Your turn."

Ulfric studies the pattern of black and white stones, and decides to go for a less fought-over corner.

"You are still reporting to Igmund?" he asks, despite the fact that these little talks do more to distract him than they do the other Nord.

Argis hums in affirmation, moves his stone to intercept Ulfric's next move. "Would be suspicious if I didn't." He is pleased with the turn, smiling as he pockets another of his opponent's stones.

How can a man this easy to read be as hard to outmanoeuvre?

"Now, is there anything in particular you wish me to include?"

"M-hmm. I'll write you down a list." If they have to feed the Jarl reports to keep him satisfied, Ulfric would rather it be information sanctioned by him.

"You do that." Argis sets down another piece. He grins and states, "You lose."

Ulfric scowls at board. He still has half his stones and he holds two key positions; the game is most certainly not over yet.

They are interrupted when a guardswoman comes running, a rare enough occurrence that Ulfric flat-out forgets it is his turn.

Argis looks up from his study of the board with a stoic, "What is it, Hertha?"

She snaps into a crisp salute, takes a deep breath, and announces, "There is an Imperial Legate here to see you."

"Me?"

"No." She shakes her head, auburn air flying, eyes wide, and points directly at Ulfric. "Him."


	13. Draw

Hers is a face he had not expected to see again, least of all here. He would know that proud set of shoulders, the jut of her angular jaw, anywhere. Rikke's hair is longer than the short-cropped style she had favoured during the days of the war. Easier to groom, she had always maintained.

Ulfric turns to his friend. "Would you mind?"

"You sure?" Argis is regarding Rikke with the same look in his eyes as he had the board earlier, already calculating the next moves.

"Please."

The soldier lingers a moment longer, then heaves himself to his feet with a grunt. It does not escape Ulfric's notice that he bends his head to whisper something to her, too low for him to hear, before he closes the door and locks it again.

Rikke's frown stays after the blond Nord leaves.

Briefly the thought that this may be his way out flashes through Ulfric's mind. Being part of the Legion, Igmund has no authority over Rikke, and - and there's another chilling perspective.

The remnants of the friendship they had nurtured when they had both fought for the same side must be what makes her regard him with compassion rather than animosity as she runs a hand as calloused as any warrior's down his cheek.

So they had not found out. Ulfric cherishes the caress for the honesty that words lack, and breathes a silent sigh of relief.

Rikke mirrors the action, but unlike him she does not have to hold back.

"What did you get yourself in this time, Jori?"

"Who's _Jori_?"

He heard. Of course he had. "I am."

"And here I thought you were _Ulfric_," Argis replies in a wry tone.

"Ulfric Jorgnir Hænirson. In the Legion it was prudent not to flaunt my heritage, in case the enemy found out," Ulfric explains. "So I went by the name given to me by my mother."

Argis is slowly shaking his head, like the concept of a second name is baffling to him. "Nobles are fucking crazy. What about 'Stormcloak'?" he asks after a while.

"That name was given to me after the Battle of the Red Ring."

"Why?"

"Because I unleashed the wrath of Kyne upon our foes. My Shouts killed more elves than any other soldier on the field that day." He had never committed a worse violation of the Greybeards' teachings than he did on that day - and never since had he felt the Mother's presence as strongly. She must have been walking the fields that day, commending the souls of the dead to Sovngarde. Did the Goddess grieve for her fallen children as she took them home? Did she hear his pain? Had the storm been her answer?

"I read the Imperial records, you know?" Argis surprises him by saying. "I do not remember them mentioning such a thing."

No indeed. The Empire was too busy stomping on the people who had founded it in first place. They must have been terrified of giving a Nord credit, when the ranks were already swell with talk of unrest about them losing the city in first place - Ulfric's mind skims over the fact, shying away from deeper contemplation thereof - and Mede's cowardly retreat.

"It is easier to cross words from paper than it is to wipe people's memories," he states bitterly. "I served under Jonna at the time. She was a great General, and she immediately realized the potential of my Voice." And she too, like so many others, had disappeared from the records, her deeds acknowledged only with a few lines when there were entire volumes dedicated to Titus Mede's exploits. It was pathetic. How much farther could a man holding the title of Emperor fall?

"Stormcloak," Argis muses, savouring the word. "I guess it could be worse. Wind-Sock or Gale-Pants just doesn't have the same punch."

Ulfric barks out a laugh, drawn out of his reverie by his friend's comment. "Indeed. Would you believe it if I told you that a friend of mine is called _Wet-Pommel_."

Argis ' guffaw is tinged with disbelief, the man obviously not sure he isn't being made a fool of. "Do I want to know what he did to deserve that name?" he asks, eyebrows climbing up into his hairline.

Ulfric manages to catch his breath between chuckles, feeling a lightness in his chest that hasn't been there for ages. "No. No, you don't."

"Wet-Pommel." Argis snorts, and shakes his head. "That's rich."

"Says the Bulwark." Ulfric turns his gaze on his friend, daring him to challenge the title.

"I blame you for that one." He receives a mock glare from the other man in return, and a punch to the upper arm that makes them both wince. Argis, because the action pulls on his stitches, and Ulfric because the soldier doesn't have an inkling about the sheer amount force he put behind the gesture.

"Oh, I shall take full credit," the Jarl's son hisses between his teeth, and rubs the bruised muscle. How long had it been since he had traded such meaningless banter? Since the last time anybody had offered him a sign of camaraderie with such ease? "And it is not unfitting."

"Words don't pull a plough."

"Oh, spare me your knowledge of fertilizer," Ulfric shoots back to the great amusement of his friend. There is only so much wisdom involving fields and cows he can stomach. His good mood fades as he addresses the subject he has avoided thus far. He can feel it sit between them, cold and wedge-shaped.

"You do know who that was." He does not have to say who.

"Yes."

"Would you have done it?" Ulfric wonders. "If she had decided that I posed too great a threat to the Empire?"

_Ulfric. You are as dear to me as a brother. It is for the love I bear for you that I will let my superiors know that you have seen the error of your ways. Promise me you will renounce this madness. _

He had promised. Had sworn he would do right by Skyrim. It had been enough for her. Ulfric swallows bile and focuses on keeping his gaze and voice steady.

"She wouldn't have made it to the bars," Argis assures him.

An interesting statement to make for a man who supposedly wasn't there - yet oddly comforting at the same time. Ulfric ruefully thinks that he truly does not know his friends anymore. Too much time spent in this place, he tells himself.

"You do not know what a Legion-trained soldier is capable of. You do not know Rikke."

Argis does not seem fazed by the statement. Then again, he hasn't struck Ulfric as a man prone to doubt his own abilities. "You don't know what _I_ am capable of."

That much at least is true. If what he had seen at the gates of Markarth had been but a taste, then he doesn't wish to find out, either. "Igmund would not have been happy with your decision," Ulfric surmises. "His mettle has turned to piss the first time the Thalmor came knocking on his door."

"It wasn't the Thalmor who nearly signed off a part of his Jarldom to the Forsworn," Argis counters.

Ulfric's eyes narrow. Was this a slip-up on the other Nord's part? Igmund is a traitor, sure. It should not surprise him that his loyalties are as insincere as the rest of the man, merely a scratch in the surface of the bedrock of Markarth. Yet the implication that his allegiance to the Empire may be less than it seems comes as a shock. So he is being kept here for - what? Insurance? A means to verify Igmund's cover story?

Rikke's visit confirms the suspicion. He decides not to think about her, or the Legion. That hurt is too deep to be contemplated here and now. Ulfric knows with a sudden, terrible clarity that the Jarl will not let him go.

"Will I ever get out of here?"

"All I know," Argis tells him with a sigh, "Is that your father is in negotiations with Igmund. If I learn more, I will tell you."

Ulfric hangs his head. No news on that front, not that it matters. Argis is not private to Igmund's council, and all he knows, is that his father's health is frail - intelligence he must protect at all costs. The Jarl of Eastmarch is his last hope for freedom, the only person wielding both the power and the means to put enough pressure on Igmund to crack his resistance.

* * *

**AN:** the longer I think about it the surer I am that Wet-Pommel is some dirty joke. I'm _dying_ to find out the story behind the name.


	14. Chapter 14

"You seem better," Ulfric observes. It did not escape his notice that the pronounced limp from the weeks past is gone from his friend's step, and that his humour has improved, indeed verges on buoyant this morning.

"Could hardly get worse," Argis says through a mouthful of bread, before swallowing.

Ulfric forgives the other man the lapse in table manners, because he had brought the fresh, crisp buns they had broken their fast with. Three of the fist-sized bread rolls are left in the wicker basket, lying in their bed of cloth, untouched and so inviting. He's had seven already. But he knows that when he tears it apart, the bread will be warm and steaming and slightly moist inside. And they still have butter left. It would be a shame to let it go to waste.

"I've been bed-ridden for a month," Argis continues, brushing crumbs off his fingers and giving his friend a knowing grin, when Ulfric helps himself to the food. "All I've done since then is sleep, eat and shit. So I thought I might try the temple. The priestesses agreed to heal me some more on the condition I remain off-duty for another month. I didn't even have to _donate_. Turns out one of the acolytes has a brother who owes his life to my unit."

He sounds pleased at that. Ulfric can see where a warrior might benefit from such an arrangement.

"Anyway, you don't exactly look rosy yourself. What is that scowl for, anyway?"

"Nothing." Ulfric rubs his itching eyes with the back of his hand. The world is misty and out of focus today, and he tries not to think about how that has become more of an issue in the past year. There are still specks of white and green dancing behind his eyelids when somebody grabs his jaw, turns it to the light. Ulfric violently jerks back, too late.

"Damn it! Why didn't you tell me?" Argis sounds angry, but that is nothing new.

"Because," Ulfric replies, trying to keep down his rising anger, "There's nothing to be done about it."

"I could get the healers– ," Argis offers, and is brusquely interrupted.

"No."

A deep breath. Then, "And why not? You'd save yourself a lot of pain if you did."

"I can't," Ulfric grits out, because he knows there is no explanation that can make Argis understand. Not when he himself cannot yet contemplate the matter with reason, cannot escape the cold clutch of panic at the mere thought-

His friend throws his hands up in the air. "Fine. Do as you please," Argis sighs. "But you've got to ask yourself: is it worth it? Because it means they've won. I bet it's why they fucked you up so bad – because they was sure you wouldn't do a thing about it."

"How much do you know?" He is horrified at his own blatancy, at how easily the protective walls of pretence he had believed himself safe behind are knocked down.

"Enough," Argis answers, and because that is not enough, "Oh, nothing you haven't told me yourself. But I ain't blind and you ain't half as good at pretending as you think you are."

"How very perceptive of you," Ulfric spits out. He will get better. The man wills his racing heart to calm, repeating the mantra in his head, that all this enquiry into his wellbeing is merely the concern of a friend - nothing more.

"You grow up with six siblings, you learn to smell when someone's serving you a load of dung, even if you're upwind," Argis states with his usual candour. "Anyway, I didn't just come to save you from starvation, I also wanted to bring you these." With that, he lifts a canvas bag and deposits it on the table.

Ulfric did not expect him to drop the matter without a lengthy argument. Muscles taut and braced for a fight, curiosity eventually wins out over any other emotions raging within him, and he pulls at a string with shaking fingers and watches as the package unravels to reveal a stack of books.

"What is this?"

"Work," Argis replies with a sigh. "Remember when you told me to do something other with my time when being injured prevented me from cracking skulls?"

Ulfric hums an affirmative tone, indicating that he is listening while his fingers brush over the leather bindings.

"Well." Argis seems almost reluctant to admit, "I did."

"I am surprised you heeded my advice."

The other man snorts. "You shouldn't be. At any rate, there was the opportunity to learn strategy and history. I took it. Figured it might come in handy, one day. But the scholars want us to write a treaty on a topic of our choice, as long as it fits the subject of the classes. So."

"What did you choose?" Ulfric enquires, mildly curious.

Argis, who is leaning his hip against the heavy desk, crosses his arms. "Ulfric Stormcloak's battle tactics in Markarth."

Ulfric's hand freezes for a second, before he picks up the first of the tomes and flips it open to read the index. "I bet Igmund is going to love this."

"He's not going to read it," the other Nord proclaims.

The Jarl's son snaps shut the volume he is holding, and puts it back on top of the other books. "You still have not explained what these are for." _And what they are doing on my desk._

"They are literature and accounts to help you get the facts straight."

For a full-on minute Ulfric can only stare at the other man. The audacity has a few choice words dancing on the tip of his tongue. He swallows them with great effort. The Gods did nothing to deserve this kind of blasphemy.

Argis meanwhile shifts his weight from one foot to the other, the only indicator that belies his outward composure.

"You could have just asked me, you know," Ulfric says quietly.

"I am asking you now." And when no more is forthcoming, Argis prompts, "Come on. I'm ten hours a day on the training grounds, I don't have the time - and you are bored."

"You don't think they will notice?" Ulfric asks. Bored or not, the mere idea is preposterous. Something else Argis said is nagging in the back of his mind. "And didn't you say you had to remain off-duty for another month?"

"I _am_. Healers never spoke about what I do with my free time." The big warrior manages to sound like a petulant child, which is most unbefitting of a man grown, Ulfric thinks. "When I come back I won't know which way to hold a sword anymore."

Somehow the Jarl's son doubts that particular statement is in danger of ever coming true. "What makes you think anybody would mistake my writing for yours?"

"Don't know. What makes you think my writing is so much worse than yours?" Argis shoots back. "Just write with your left, smudge the letters, and don't forget to throw in plenty of mistakes in spelling."

If that's what he thinks, Ulfric will gladly show his friend the error of his thinking. "Then I shall prove you wrong."

"Right. Oh," Argis throws in, almost as an afterthought, "You're also not allowed to use the words 'Igmund', 'bastard' and 'traitor' in the same sentence. And don't imply intercourse with animals or pointy things."

The cork leaves the inkpot with a soft _plop_. "Hm. This takes the fun out of it." He is already considering how to best phrase arguments, how to conceal witty barbs without them being lost on the observant reader. The paper feels soft and gritty under his fingers, virgin and ready for him to fill it with his very own piece of history.

Argis flashes the blond man a grin. "You'll think of something."

Ulfric accepts the truth of the statement with a single, "Of course I will."

This goes beyond him helping out his friend cheat his way through class. It even goes beyond proving that such a feat cannot be done, that no scholar will think the words of a Jarl's son came from the pen of a farmboy. He hadn't seen at first. But this way, he can tell the truth about himself and his campaign in the Reach. An account of the events untarnished by his enemies who would leave his name in tatters.

Being able to do so right under Igmund's nose fills him with spiteful amusement. Ulfric chuckles as he shaves the tip off a quill.

"I'm reading this before I submit it," Argis announces, unsurprisingly. He watches the other man for a moment longer, before he turns to leave.

"Wait," Ulfric calls out, without pausing in his preparations, .making sure that he has a cloth for blotting and finely ground dust to make the ink set. He pulls an envelope from inside his mantle.

"What is it?"

"A letter. I need it delivered to my father."

A moment of silence, then Argis says, "You have been allowed to write home."

Ulfric makes sure to keep his eyes steady on the other Nord's when he says, "Not that kind of letter."

"Right." Argis takes the offered bundle of papers. "And how do you suggest I do it?"

"Send it to Whiterun."

"Whiterun?" Argis repeats.

"To Fralia Grey-Mane, to be more precise," Ulfric explains. "Or to Vignar in Jorrvaskr, if you must."

"And how am I to explain that I suddenly have mail for people in Whiterun?" There is an edge to his voice that wasn't there before.

Ulfric lifts his quill, lets it rest against the side of the pot, so that the excess ink can drip off, and smiles, "Oh, I'm sure you'll think of something."

"You're getting too good at this," Argis grumbles as he leaves Ulfric to his work.


	15. Chapter 15

"I'm sorry," Argis greets Ulfric hesitantly, a meeting the Jarl's son has dreaded ever since the courier arrived bearing news from home. "About your Da."

Ulfric inclines his head, outwardly accepting the sentiment, and pushes the sorrow out of his heart. There is no room for it and the anger, both. And he needs the latter, needs the burning passion to carry on. This is not the time for him to grieve. This is not the place. If he cannot mourn Hænir properly, then he shall hold off on doing so altogether, the pain buried deep within, to be drained only when he can kneel in the grand chapel of Talos on the Day of the Dead, when the spirits of those passed away walk amongst the living, and say his farewells the way they were meant to be said.

But all he has for now is a eulogy, half-finished, and though he has been working on it for days, he can barely make the words fit together; a child in this regard when he should be standing tall; son and heir.

His father deserves better, so much better.

"Have you finished it?" Argis asks, after a while.

"Almost." He picks up another roll of parchment, already sealed and tied off with a plain piece of cord. For pretence's sake, because he knows that this, like all his mail, will be opened and read. Imprisonment grants him no privacy, not even at a time like this. "This one's the official version. You can take it to Igmund."

Argis pockets it without comment.

"Is your contact still up to the trip to Whiterun?"

"Aye. But not for much longer. Once the snow begins to fall there will be no leaving the Reach."

Ulfric nods. "I am aware. You will have it by then."

The soldier fidgets a little, tries to cover it up by picking up a book from Ulfric's desk, and the Jarl's son doesn't make a move to stop him.

"Arrianus Arius," he says out loud what Argis' lips frame, and Ulfric can see the question on his friend's face. "Have you read his treatise on the Madmen of the Reach?" Ulfric enquires.

Argis turns the book in his hands, brows furrowed. "Is it the guy who got real friendly with the Forsworn and tries to convince us that they are right to murder and pillage, and that Daedra worship isn't all that bad?"

"Yes." In light of what he knows about his friend, Ulfric just settles for, "Essentially."

"The Bear of Markarth," Argis reads. "Is that-"

"It's almost as charming as the subject of his other book," Ulfric doesn't let him finish. "And it is not enough to slander my honour, apparently, but he drags my father's name into his filthy Imperial lies. My father was known as the Bear of Eastmarch. I am sure this is where this disgrace of a _scholar_ got the idea for the title. I bet he thought it was original."

"What was he like?"

"How should I know?"

"I meant your father," Argis replies, unruffled, and puts down the book.

"I know." His friend isn't giving him any ground for argument, and part of him is glad. The other part wishes for any outlet other than quill and ink. It wishes to inflict all the pain that is gnawing through him, inside-out, just so he isn't the only one feeling it. "Forgive me." Maybe he will do himself a favour, and burn that book tonight.

"S'alright."

"My father - ," it is harder than he anticipated to speak of him. "He was a great man, well-respected by his peers and loved by his subjects. Ask anybody in the Eastmarch, and they will all agree, even those who held different political opinions. And he was a good father. The best. He pretended not to know when we stole into the kitchens at night to raid them for sweets. When I feared leaving Windhelm for High Hrothgar, he sent my sisters to accompany me. Later he would make sure master Arngeir gave me leave to visit home." Ulfric pauses to swallow. "He kept sending me packages, throughout the entire war. It's when you unwrap a little piece of _home_ that you know what you are fighting for. Whom you are fighting for. And I know he did the same for Frey and Ísa. The news of their deaths broke him. He wasn't the same since. But-"

"Go on."

"He never blamed me."

Argis tilts his head in question. "Why should he?"

"Because it would be easier." Ulfric looks away. Because he already blamed himself.

"What about your mother?" the soldier asks in a cautious tone.

And strange as it is, talking about her merely sparks a dull ache - the longing for something Ulfric knows he will never have again. "She died years ago, when I was just a boy. Don't be sorry," he says before Argis can, "I can barely remember her, now. There are fragments. Her smile, the smell of cloves lingering on her dress. She had her own garden in the palace. Father kept tending to it, after she was gone. I wonder if it's still there."

The conversation comes to a lull, but the soldier is still chewing over something, Ulfric can tell, and it doesn't take him long to find out when his friend enquires, "What's going to happen now?"

"What do you mean?"

"This means you will become Jarl now, yes?"

"Yes. I am my father's rightful heir. Ironic, really, when I have never ruled anything in my life." His sisters had received all the training, when he was studying the Way of the Voice. And what he had learned after his return from Cyrodiil - it wasn't enough.

"Before Markarth I have never even seen a man killed," Argis says, and comes up with possibly the most useless piece of advice Ulfric has ever received. "Just pretend you're somebody who knows what he's doing."

"That's it?"

Argis shrugs. "Pretty much. So who's ruling Windhelm now?"

"Thorsten, my father's housecarl would be the one to make the final decision," Ulfric explains, "Though he will be either supported or opposed by the other members of the court. Considering my father's popularity, and the fact that one Jarl being kept imprisoned by another like this has never happened before, to my knowledge - it is likely they will declare war on the Reach."

"I thought as much."

Argis' admission doesn't surprise Ulfric. He has learned that his friend is a lot more perceptive than he lets on, and he can only agree when the soldier points out that,

"Neither of us can afford to do battle. Your warriors will die by the thousands at the mountain passes, and that's after crossing the entire country. Ours already barely hold on to the territory we have wrenched from the Forsworn. This is going to end badly."

"I concur."

Argis rubs at his eyes with thumb and forefinger, a familiar gesture that ends with him pinching the bridge of his nose. "I need to talk to Igmund. Though why he should see reason this time I do not know." The big warrior sighs heavily and rises to his feet.

"Wait." If there is a war coming, Ulfric needs to make sure he will be able to face, and should he ever get out of this pit, to participate in it. Able in body as well as in mind. "About that healing you once mentioned."

Argis pauses. "Yes?"

_She was a great healer. The best he had ever known. She could bring back a man from the brink of death, almost as if she could sense the exact moment when you willed yourself to let go. And she would do it time and time again. _

_Sometimes she'd laugh. And then she'd begin anew. _

_At some point she would stop, wipe a pearl of sweat from her brow and wash her hands. Refresh herself whilst she tells him what she plans on doing next. Sometimes she doesn't say, and he does not know which is worse, the certainty of what is to come or the unknown. _

_Worse than the pain is the healing. Because when the world has gone grey around the edges, and sound fades, the hope blossoms, that this is the final time. The end. _

_The golden glow robs him of it. _

_If they could kill him only once..._

_Maybe he would have died before... _

"Ulfric? Ulfric. Would you like me to talk to the healers?"

Before he can reconsider, Ulfric gives a curt nod. He doesn't ask where the money will come from. It's not from his pocket, that much is for sure. "When- make sure I'm out first, yes?"

A moment of indecision, then Argis nods, "Will do."

_Dying is easy. It's when you long for it with every fibre of your being when you truly know you have it bad. When you think of death as mo more than a moment away from the pain. Then, you welcome its embrace. _

_They chained him. She liked to have him on his knees. _

_The awareness, the heightened sharpness of his senses that comes in the aftermath, before everything they do to him runs together in endless white-hot searing agony and moments of black when he finally passes out. _

_He knows two times: when they torture him and when they haven't yet begun the next session. _

_Once he managed to piss on her. He is still chuckling to himself when unconsciousness comes to claim him. He lets himself believe that maybe death will be his reward this time. She leaves him in chains, lying in a pool of his own vomit for the guards to do with as they please. _

_It does not break him. _

_He does not remember what did. _

"Excuse me." Ulfric rises abruptly, but once on his feet does not know what to do next. "I am feeling unwell." He expects Argis to leave.

Argis doesn't. He slowly sinks back down, resolution written across his face. "Did I tell you how my brother won and lost a girl all in one night?" the soldier asks, his tone light.

Apparently the appointment with Igmund can wait.

"No." Ulfric takes a deep breath. Bars all around him, Ulfric Hænirson has nowhere to hide from the past leering at him. But that man is no more. Mortally wounded in the Great War, the final piece of him died with the last of his family. Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak will not run. Ulfric sits down next to his friend. "But I would very much like to hear that tale."


	16. Chapter 16

"What's their name?" Argis asks one cold summer evening when they're both deep into their cups; deep enough that the chill of stone is but a distant discomfort instead of the persistent pain nagging at the very marrow of Ulfric's bones. "Of the one who did this to you."

_What? _He thinks he has misunderstood, at first.

"You have to tell me," the soldier says with a serious face and voice, "So I'll know whom to kill."

In his head, a voice that he recognizes as Frey's, is screaming, _How?_ _How_? _How_! Numb lips form a near voiceless answer, the first thing that comes to his mind. "I will kill them, and no one else."

Argis looks at him shrewdly. "Then you have to tell me so I'll know whom _not_ to kill."

oooo

When he is alone again, Ulfric tests the name, cautiously, as he would the edge of a very sharp blade. Like all guilty things it is done in the dark of the night, with no one to bear witness. It is the first time he allows the word to pass his lips. "You will pay, Elenwen," he tells the ghost of his past, conjured by the mere utterance of _her_ name. "One day you will pay for what you have done."

oooo

"Something seems to trouble you." Ulfric notices the next time his friend enters, a frown creasing a brow that's still too young to show the first permanent wrinkles.

"Ondolemar," is Argis' reply, as if that one word is all the explanation needed.

"That's an Altmeri name," Ulfric remarks.

Argis nods. "Arrived yestereve. He's our new Thalmor watchdog."

"New?"

"The old one disappeared somewhere between Tírmach Lair and Karthwasten," Argis says easily, as if the disappearance of a Justiciar was of no more interest to him than that of an old pair of rusty tongs.

Ulfric feels a flash of savage pleasure at the thought of the elf ending in a snow troll's belly, or having his heart carved out by the Forsworn in some vile Daedric ritual.

Argis meanwhile is pondering something, chewing on his lower lip. "Say, you would not perchance speak- "

"Altmeris?" Ulfric supplies for him. "Yes, fluently." Even when every syllable of that tongue burned his throat like vinegar. "After my horse was shot, when I was recuperating from a broken ankle and could no longer serve as a messenger, I was transferred. Rikke and I, we became code-breakers. It was our duty to decipher the enemy correspondence we had managed to intercept."

"I was wondering whether you could look at something for me, later."

"Of course. I take it has something to do with your recent _problem_."

"It does," Argis confirms.

"What will you do about him?" Ulfric asks.

"Do?" Argis repeats, surprised. "We'll do whatever it takes to keep the tosser happy."

It is not the answer he expected, and he forces out between clenched teeth, "I never took you for one to dance to a Blackskirt's whistle."

The way Argis looks at him reminds Ulfric of Arngeir whenever he was disappointed of something his pupil said or did.

"There's only so many wars I can fight at the same time," Argis replies coldly. "So until you actually sit on your father's throne and have to make decisions like that yourself, kindly shove that judgement. If giving the Thalmor what he's after will keep his abnormally long nose out of our business and from harming anybody, well, then I'll just have to make sure that what goat shit we feed him is to his taste."

His is stare brighter than a man's eyes have a right to be. They are the eyes of a mountain cat, Ulfric realizes, or an eagle, their glow the last thing you would see in the night.

He thinks for a long time on what his friend had said, because it is not like the other Nord to get this upset. And then it dawns on him. "Argis," he says, suddenly. "You are a genius."

His former scorn forgotten, the man in question laughs, a sonorous sound that seems so out of place down here that it never fails to make the fine hairs on Ulfric's neck stand on end.

_Predators do not fear the dark_, flashes through his mind.

"And it only took you five years to notice."

oooo

That conversation too hangs between them for the weeks to come. "The war," Argis eventually breaks the taboo, weeks later, "You never speak of it."

It not strictly true. He had tried, but there are no words in Nordic, Dovahzuul, Cyrodiilic or Altmeris to describe the sheer scale of the Bellum Magnum. And if there are some in the Old Tongue of the Reach, he does not know them. It is easier to focus on the events - to view them through a scholar's lens and to let them be names and numbers, not people and places; a worn heel visible beneath a building collapsed by catapults, a letter preserving the last thoughts of a comrade, received a day after your commanding officer told you they had perished.

"Naarfin took the city," Ulfric recounts with a surgeon's detachment. "He lost it again, a year later. I guess the Dominion branded him a weakling, a failure."

Who would want to associate themselves with somebody whom the Emperor had hung from the Whitegold Tower, keeping him alive for nine days, one for each of the Nine?

"We cheered. We would stand under that tower, watch the crows draw their circles ever tighter; and we would laugh. There was this game where one man would pull a rope to get him swinging and everybody could fire arrows at him. The best mages ensured he would not die."

"I take it you partook of it?" Argis asks, his tone neutral.

"Several times. Scored a few hits, too," Ulfric declares proudly.

It had felt good, to cause pain to another, so damned good. It kept him from wondering how every officer who was close to Naarfin disappeared without a trace, and why. Elenwen was nothing, if not thorough.

When he can bear to think of it, he wonders what decorations she received. What the reward was for-

"I watched my friends die. When we were captured, some of them used their last breath to scream, _don't tell them_, because the Empire was all, because it was strong. Because it was worth it." He needs Argis to understand.

"And then Titus Mede signed the Whitegold Concordat."

Ulfric hangs his head, swallowing down the acerbic feeling he can taste on his tongue without much success. "And then Titus Mede signed the Whitegold Concordat."

Coming from above, a particularly loud shout followed by the sound of shattering glass, makes them both jump.

"They're celebrating Mid-Year," Argis explains with a glare, as if he disapproved of the festivity's intrusion upon their talk.

"The war claimed both of my sisters."

It would have been about this time, too when they had found Ísa's corpse – recognizable only be her insignia and the bear head brooch – swinging in the main square of Aleswell, two weeks after the truce, when peace negotiations had already begun.

"Frey was a Centurion, a commanding officer in the Eighth Legion."

It was annihilated while holding the southern city and the walls, whilst the Emperor used the northern gates to run with his tail between his legs.

"Mede retreated almost up to Skyrim, surrendering the lands between the capital and Bruma. Decianus had left half his forces in Hammerfell, declaring them 'invalid'."

The cunning old fox had always been a step ahead of their enemy.

"Jonna was a great general. I served under her. Before the Red Ring – or, rather, during the first days of it."

Before they had fallen apart.

"We didn't even know our regiment during that final battle. You saw a friendly flag, you grouped around it."

The Eighth Legion was gone, the First and Fourth were reformed into the new Second. The Third, Sixth and Seventh became the First, later the Third when the forces were divided once more, and the former Sixth sent as a reserve to support Jonna on the front lines.

"The Fifth and the old Second Legion were annihilated, the few remaining soldiers transferred into the others," Ulfric sums up the mess that their army had been at the time.

"Which one did you fight in?" Argis asks, though the answer, when it comes, does not seem to surprise him.

"The Fifth. Second Cohort. Titus Mede was leading the First Cohort."

They had not entered the city until it had practically fallen.

"Let me guess, the Second was the first one in?" Argis deduces. "That's how you took Markarth."

"The situation was entirely different here," Ulfric points out. "I could bring down a section of Markarth's wall after a year of sapping them, and because the Forsworn neglected to maintain them."

"Won't happen again," Argis grunts. "Not on my watch."

"I had the time. Back then we had to act quickly, and to make use of any means necessary. Mede's retreat sabotaged as much as they could, but the city was well fortified, its walls impenetrable, some said. The gold-skinned bastards beat us in disproving that claim. But Flavuis found a way around them."

"Who is Flavius?" Argis interrupts for the first time. "I never heard of him before."

"Few have. Caius Flavius," Ulfric remembers, "Was the tactician who came up with the plan to retake the Imperial City. Can you imagine? Before the war he had been a mere carpenter's son. And conveniently, he had perished in battle, allowing for their venerable Emperor to take all credit."

The rumour had circled the corps that it had been a blow through his back that had killed him.

"We infiltrated via the canalization; tunnels of the Ayleid Undercity that were once used by slaves. In one instance, we delved a tunnel under Rumare."

"How is that even possible?" Argis' curiosity is almost palpable.

"With a lot of digging," Ulfric tells him. "We prayed every day the thing wouldn't collapse on our heads."

"What do you pray for now, Ulfric?" Argis enquires, cutting off the other Nord's account.

"Strength," Ulfric says. He had wished for so much, before. Such inconsequential things. "I pray for strength to vanquish all who stand in my way."

"Strength isn't something you pray for," Argis reminds him quietly, ever the voice of reason. "If strength is what you wish for, you need to do something about it. You still owe me for the last game, remember?"

He does. Ulfric is not a man to forget a debt.

* * *

Dear Bluemnkybuzd! Thank you for your wonderful comments, they have made my day on more than one occasion. I have laughed so hard at the image of Wulf crashing through several floors of house in a bathtub. It is a pretty apt description of how his life's going, isn't it? Yessss, Bruma was written abroad and I was going for a more nostalgic setting, and a somewhat reflective and rather aggressive Wulf. He really does not like introspection. Argis still has letters from Ulfric, absolutely! And will find out the last part when Wulf gets his thrown into Cidhna Mine :)

Armor Rash Cream. My god, this. THIS. I love the concept.

I'm not working on a novel, sadly, but one day in the undefined future I will try my hand at publishing (and oh man, do I have ideas).

I still want to crunch out ORR and wrap up all the loose threads, but then maybe I also really do miss my boys as well. Maybe a visit is in order?


	17. Chapter 17

Exactly a year and a day later, Ulfric rises from his meditative posture just as the sky begins to turn from black to the dark blue of a bottle of ink. He has fallen back into the routine he had kept during his days in High Hrothgar. Every morning before sunrise he uses the quiet of when the world's asleep and he feels closest to the Gods for prayer and for thought.

This time though, the peace is shattered by a door slamming shut above him, quickly followed by the rapid beat of footsteps as someone hurries downstairs.

That in itself is unusual and worrying - no one has sought him out at this hour before, and Ulfric is undecided about how to react. He doesn't think his irregular sleeping schedule is of any interest to his captors, yet he braces himself for trouble nonetheless.

But it is only Argis who appears before his cell, looking like he's had quite a night, the prominent black circles under his eyes attesting to a night spent drinking. He lets himself in, and dumps a bag on Ulfric's desk that lands with a heavy thud, crushing underneath it a poem Ulfric had been composing for the past four days.

"Get dressed."

Ulfric was about to make his displeasure known, but something in his friend's voice gives him pause. A light tug on the string is all that is needed to unravel the knot on top of the bag.

Stuffed inside the Nord finds clothes; a light, hooded coat and durable boots with a crust of mud that tells him that not too long ago they had belonged to another. One by one he pulls out a stack of papers - maps, he realizes, a large canteen of water, some food, two small flasks and - at the very bottom he catches the sharp glint of metal.

Argis waves his hand in impatience. "Would you _hurry up_? We don't have much time." He looks over his shoulder, keeping a close watch on the entrance to the dungeons.

_Is this really happening? _

Ulfric's thoughts are a whirlwind of incoherence, but at the center there is the calm of understanding.

The Nord doesn't dally, doesn't ask, just dresses quickly, stomping his feet to help them slide into the boots. They're a surprisingly good fit. Lastly, and with trembling fingers, he slips the axe through a hoop on his belt.

"Ready?" Argis asks. "Good, let's go."

It strikes Ulfric as a strange thing that he takes the time to lock the door of the cell behind them. Together they walk the maze of the Underkeep and barracks. Ulfric tries to keep track of the turns they take - _left, left, right, wait, was there a branch-off?_ \- but he is soon hopelessly lost.

"Won't they suspect you?"

Argis shakes his head without averting his gaze from the dark of the corridor. "There will be threescore soldiers swearing I drank with them through the night and into the morning."

He stops.

Ulfric can barely discern the outline of a door in the gloom.

"Here we are. Put on a cheerful face and give the guard a wave." Then he raps the pommel of his dagger against the metal. "It's me!" Argis calls out, and Ulfric flinches, feeling like yesterday's meal has turned into something alive and incredibly wriggly in his stomach.

Surely someone must hear-

Somebody _did_, and a heartbeat later the door opens and they pass through. A stocky man squints at them, his eyes reduced to slits.

"Thanks, Jolf," Argis says amiably.

Ulfric remembers his instruction, and hesitantly raises a hand and sees the other man do the same.

Argis wishes the guard a calm watch, and walks away in a brisk but sure stride that Ulfric finds himself struggling to imitate. "His eyesight is for shit," his friend explains once they're far enough away, "But he won't tell 'cause he needs the money from his post to keep his family fed."

"Won't he at least notice you left with a blond man?" Ulfric enquires uneasily, resisting the urge to look over his shoulder.

He catches the glint of Argis' grin out of the corner of his eyes; a sliver of white gone as quickly as it had appeared.

"I came in with a blond man," is all the explanation Ulfric receives. Argis points to their left. "This way."

He takes them through a network of winding passages. The smell of cooking cabbage hangs heavily in the morning air, and the chopping sound of a turning waterwheel can be heard above the rush of a large river. Ulfric looks up and tries to orient himself, but all he can see are rows of square, squat houses that sport a second wooden storey like a growth. The makeshift constructions slant inwards in many cases, forming a half-dome and making the alley narrower above than below.

They have to be at the lowest level of the city, he thinks. Sure enough, his guess is proven true when upon reaching what he first mistook for a dead end, they climb a spiralling stairway carved into the cliffside. It ends abruptly, and Ulfric finds himself right in front of the imposing city walls.

A redheaded soldier is standing guard. Ulfric vaguely remembers elbowing him into the bathtub, years ago. Those freckles are very prominent.

"All's quiet," the man says in a hushed whisper. He is constantly stepping from foot to the other, pausing only to unlock and pull open a small side-gate. Something in his pointy face and twitchy manner reminds Ulfric of a marten, but he lacks time to contemplate it further, because Argis shoves him through the door, with a nod to his comrade.

And then the first sharp breath he sucks in nearly chokes him, because his throat is so constricted he can feel every beat of his heart within.

Behind him the door closes with a dull thud and before him the mountains rise in a painter's vision of the Reach, all hazy, washed-out pastels and sharp peaks. It smells of humid stone and moss, earth and spruce.

"Do you remember what I told you last week?"

Ulfric nods, drinking in the sight of the misty valley.

"Good. 'Cause that's the way you'll be going. There's two dales you have to cross, and the ground's steep. Get yourself a good walking stick and whatever happens, keep going. Just put one foot in front of the other. Crawl, if you have to. You have until dawn the day after tomorrow."

"And how far do I have to go?" Ulfric wants to know.

"Fourty miles," Argis replies, dead serious. "Or thereabouts."

Ulfric swallows. "That's a lot of ground to cover in a day." And in unfavourable terrain at that.

"I got you something that should help," Argis says with a motion towards Ulfric's bag.

Ulfric fishes out one of the small vials. There is no label to identify the contents. "What is it?"

"Stamina potion. From Dibella's temple. Don't ask."

"Does it have side-effects?" Ulfric immediately asks.

"This is not the time," Argis rebukes with a huff, and Ulfric has to admit he is probably right. "The water is mixed with sour wine. It tastes like troll piss, but it does wonders for thirst. The first leg of the journey is the hardest part, but at least there'll be plenty of streams you can drink out of. Don't eat and drink at the same time," he counsels finally in the stern tone of a parent. "Follow the main road until you're past the Left Hand Mine and Ereh Erraid. Once you've left behind the second village, take some time to study the maps I drew. They're all numbered so you can't get them confused."

"And then what?"

"Your friends should be waiting for you at the Eil'Amhren watchtower." A pause, then, "Don't miss it."

He can hardly believe it. Can't fathom it. This. This is really happening.

"Come with me," Ulfric says, surprising even himself.

"I'm needed here."

_I _need you.

"Come with me to Windhelm. I will make you a Thane in your own right."

Thanedom is a sweet promise, and for a moment he can see his friend weighing the option. Then Argis shakes his head, dashing that budding hope against the bedrock that is Markarth's bones.

"My place is here."

"If Igmund finds out – "

"Let me worry about Igmund." The soldier's decision sounds final, but he softens it with, "I will come for a visit when I can."

"Stormblade. Let me give you this title, at least. If you mention it to the right people, the gates to the very palace will open for you."

This time Argis accepts.

"How can I ever repay you?"

"By not getting yourself caught," Argis replies brusquely, drawing Ulfric into a brief but heartfelt embrace. "Now go. GO!"

He is right. Ulfric must not tarry. He steps back and lifts the hood of his coat over his head, covering his blond hair, though he wonders how many people even recall his face. He does not have the looks of the lord who rode at the head of an army to conquest, six years ago.

Ulfric can hear the redhead's whispered, "You think he'll make it? Argis?"

The reply is lost to him.

oooo

Argis had collected those debts Ulfric had built up during their games. The exercise gives him the strength he needs to pull himself up the steep rock. A few hours later he is lathered in sweat, bent over and trying to breathe away the persistent pain in his side. He has narrowly avoided twisting an ankle when he slipped on some loose rocks, but now there's a deep cut across his left palm from when he used his hand to break his fall.

He packs the wound with earth to deaden the pain, and continues, paying more attention to where he steps from now on. From time to time he takes a gulp of water. The first time it touched his lips he nearly spilled it all, the sour taste bringing back the memory of his days in the Legion.

Before midday he can hear dogs barking. He does not know whether they are near or far. The sound accompanies him for the rest of the day, the wind carrying it from all directions. Did they have him surrounded already?

Eventually he reaches the high plateau. It stretches out endlessly before him, grassy hills that look like some giant being had strewn the ground with boulders of all sizes. There are thickets of twisted mountain pine, but only a few copses of trees. Ulfric doesn't know how to step to ease the burn in the soles of his feet. He tries short steps first, then long, then a jog. The thick tussock makes for softer footing, but for a more treacherous one.

Once he comes across a bear, brown and shaggy and unhealthily thin.

"KAAN," Ulfric breathes, and the beast lowers its head and continues digging for roots, paying him no more heed.

But the Nord's stomach twists in a knot, because try though he might, he cannot guess the season. Is it fall or spring? Or is this what summer looks like in the mountains?

oooo

By the time it gets dark he is shuffling on stiff, leaden legs, half his weight supported on his walking stick clutched by blistered hands and numb fingers. He had only stopped to relieve himself and to look at the maps, following the instructions of each simple drawing.

_When you find the brook, go upstream_, is written in Argis' lopsided scrawl. Of course he had chosen a path Ulfric could follow even in the night.

oooo

It is getting light again when he reaches the waterfall and he checks the next piece of parchment, shocked out of his stupor when he sees that it is the last one.

He spots the mountain with the funnily slanted tip in the distance, and the hill that looks like a saddle, and the other one that resembles a balding head, with a crown of trees near the top. The tower is drawn on a rise between the two.

He looks up, shielding his eyes with his hand against the furious glare of the rising sun. Was that a golden glint in the distance?

He walks on, taking one agonizing step after the other.

When he arrives, the tower is on fire.

Just a reflection, Ulfric's tired mind supplies, of the sun upon the golden brass roof.

Three horses are grazing nearby, wearing full tack. A shout comes from above. Somebody is running towards him. Galmar looks more haggard and wild than that bear. Thorsten stands up slowly on stiff knees and pours sand over a tiny campfire.

Ulfric does not know whether to laugh or weep, but he lacks the energy for either. There is so much to do, so much they have to say to each other after all these years.

Instead, they help him mount, and then they ride. Eastward.

Homeward.


	18. Chapter 18

Following Ulfric Stormcloak's astonishing escape from the hold's most securely guarded prison cell after six years of incarceration, Argis finds himself on one knee in front of the Mournful Throne. He has ample time to contemplate the spider's web of white lines where the otherwise supple leather of his training pants has grown dry and rough, before the steward announces Igmund's arrival.

The Jarl has called on him - the missing man's only tie to the outside world. Argis would want answers too, in his stead. The cold of the floor has not yet seeped into his joint, but Argis can feel the stiff numbness in it when he rises once Igmund beckons him to do so.

The Jarl is missing the usual escort of his housecarl, who has probably been ordered to lead the man-hunt for the fugitive Stormcloak. In his absence Igmund's disquiet is evident, as he slides back and forth, eyes darting nervously around the vast hall. The man sits uneasily on the throne in the knowledge that it has been made for greater men.

Argis grasps the wrist of his left hand with his right and squares his shoulders, his presence a pond of calm, untouched by the turbulence all around him.

"Well?" Igmund is the first to break the silence. "Do you have something to say?"

"My Jarl?" Unlike the other man's, his voice does not break on the first syllable. "Do I stand accused?"

Igmund's hands clench around the armrests of this throne, his fingers thin, brittle things that have never been strengthened by grasping a blade. "Of public drunkenness, misconduct, and damage to private property. Apparently you must have had quite the night, because one of the establishments in the lower district was reported to have caught fire."

_Lars, you dumbass pyromaniac. _

"Forgive me," Argis says in an attempt to placate the other man. Never mind that public drunkenness was considered compulsory on feast days rather than a crime. "Things may have gotten a bit... wild. We will cover all the damages, that I avow."

"You'd better." Igmund settles back with a grimace. "The hold's treasury is not here for covering up your and your fiends' escapades!"

Argis takes the admonishment with his head bowed. "My humblest apologies."

"Oh, for fuck's sake," the Jarl shows a rare flash of what in another man might be called a temper. "I'm not a toasted Breton wheatbread for you to butter me up like this. I called you here to discuss," and here a finger points at the center of Argis' chest, "Matters of internal security."

"Very well." Argis fixes his gaze once more on the man in front of him. "But this doesn't strike me as the right place."

"This is the palace," Igmund points out, unnecessarily.

"Exactly."

The Jarl's eyes narrow. He then gets up, and motions for the warrior to follow him, leading the way through the keep.

They ascend the steps to the battlements in single file, and in silence. The guards stationed there salute and then go back to ignoring them with professionally blank miens that the Bulwark knows hide keen listeners. Most of the barrack gossip reaches his ears after all, sooner or later.

"May I ask," he picks up the threads of their former conversation when they are out of hearing range and the Jarl seems unwilling to do so. "Why me?"

"You underestimate my capability of launching an investigation," Igmund states with satisfaction badly concealed by his scornful tone. "You may find it interesting that the guards on duty were all Thongvor's men."

"Were they now?" Argis asks softly.

Of course they had been. He'd spent months collecting favours to get all of the regular guards to switch posts with men he suspected were on a second payroll from the Silver-Bloods, and twice as long conjuring the circumstances that would lead up to the necessary changes.

"If you happen to have a list of them or a means of providing me with one..."

"Then what?" The Jarl turns sharply to face the other Nord, his cloak winding and twisting in the wind like it was a live thing trying to escape the clutches of an invisible predator. "What are you saying? Speak plainly!"

"Just that there are few... unfinished jobs that lack volunteers." Ones that warriors are known to frequently not return from.

Igmund seems pleased with the suggestion, and goes back to venting his anger against Thongvor. "He has set free a man who will spend the rest of his life hating me!"

They come to a section of the wall where a part of the battlements, including the merlons, are missing. It was probably Ulfric's siege weapons, or the Forsworn who had destroyed this part of the palace, years ago. Igmund doesn't seem to notice as he spins around. "He must have been planning this for _six_ years!"

Argis catches him around the upper arm. "Careful, my Jarl," he says, tightening his grip vice-like. "It is a long way down."

Igmund blanches and in a thin and trembling voice whispers, "So this is why I am here."

Argis refrains from mentioning that he picked this spot himself. "I do not mean you any harm, my Jarl." He pulls the wide-eyed man to the side, away from the edge.

Igmund opens and closes his mouth like a stranded fish, before croaking, "I have been betrayed!"

Argis shrugs and continues with their route. He has no words of comfort to offer. "You once did extend the right of guests and the protection of your hall to Ulfric."

"Do you have something to say, soldier?"

"The gods will judge you for that, not me. But remember who helped you regain your father's throne. It had not been the Silver-Bloods." _Which_ _you would see better if your face wasn't buried that deeply in Thonar's arse-crack. _

"Thonar handed me Ulfric," Igmund immediately protests.

"And he used the opportunity of his capture to butcher the natives of the city, and blame the purge on Stormcloak's soldiers, who were camped outside of the city at the time."

A ruthless and cunning move that proved he might well be the more dangerous of the two brothers, despite being the younger one in years.

"There is no proof it had been his orders!"

"If not his, then whose?" Argis replies with rancour. _Yours?_ "You do not often walk the streets of the lower districts, my Jarl." And that is just as well, because the poor and the native Reachfolk - two traits that unsurprisingly often go hand-in-hand - hate Igmund almost as much as they do the Silver-Blood family who owns the Jarl same as it does them.

"And you would believe the rabble?"

"Why not? They have no reason to lie."

Igmund seems to be of another opinion. "If I find out that you were behind Ulfric Stormcloak's escape after all- "

"My Jarl, you can ask the soldiers," Argis butts in though it is hard to muster any righteous anger with his heartbeat thundering in his throat.

"I did! Igmund punches the railing with the flat of his palm. "Half the army swears by Talos and their mothers that they saw you drinking with them all night long." He sounds almost disappointed.

"Well, that inn didn't catch fire on its own." At least Halof now has a free square he can purchase with the reparations. For the last year he had been fighting a hopeless battle to get that damned permit to build his new inn where the old one had now burned - not to the ground, no - just enough for a troop eager for their own establishment to dismantle the building overnight.

"If I find out that you had something to do with it, I _will_ have you executed," Igmund finishes the sentence he couldn't before and glumly looks out over Markarth's gates and the valley beyond like the green fields had given him insult.

"I have a better proposition. Make me your housecarl instead," Argis suggests.

The Jarl actually laughs, shaking his head as his guffaws subside into dry chuckles. "You have a nerve."

"Kill me and I'm sure Ulfric will make enquiries," Argis points out. "If you are worried about him, you are right to be so. He may come after you one day. He is bitter, he - feels - betrayed, and if he makes it home, he _will_ become the Jarl of Eastmarch. And I'm the only one standing between you and him. He listens to me."

"So why should I trust you, then?" Igmund asks with pointedly raised brows.

"Because as your housecarl, my loyalties would lie only with you." He would be honour-bound to serve him if he ever was to ever see Sovngarde. Argis isn't sure he wants his life tied to the other Nord, but he hasn't risen through the ranks, hasn't become the warrior he is to spend his life chasing after recruits and Forsworn.

"You have been elected for training. I gave you a second chance when no one else believed you would recover from your injuries. Is that not enough?"

"No."

An exasperated sigh. "What is it you want then?"

"A fair chance." Two things count in Markarth more than valour or one's reputation, even if it comes from prowess in combat: the origins of the blood that flows in your veins and the quantity of silver that lines your pockets.

"I don't come from money," Argis points out. "My ancestor were neither accomplished warriors, nor adventurers, but simple folk. I have no lands, no servants or official titles to call my own."

"Then why should I choose your services?"

"Everything to my name I achieved through hard work. I didn't inherit shit. I didn't spend my coin on favours. I own a sword, and I dare anyone who does the same to come and dispute my claim as the best warrior in the Reach. The best in all of Skyrim, perhaps."

The Jarl snorts. "That is a bold claim to make."

"And one I shall live up to."

"We will see about that," Igmund responds with boredom, faked or real - Argis cannot tell.

"Aye." _Yes_, he thinks, _you will_.

"Argis."

"Yes, m'Jarl?"

"Thogvor Silver-Blood has challenged me to a bet."

_And?_

"We shall pick champions, and the one whose fails to progress, has to cover the expenses for the entire event, from the price money to the actual bet. And we are talking about a _substantial_ amount of gold," he adds in a sour undertone. "Yet I could not refuse without losing my face. Such a slight to my person is unacceptable."

"I have therefore decided to enter _you_ in the Spring Tournament next season," Igmund announces to the blond warrior's great astonishment. "When _Da ná Laochra_ comes," he says with a pointed look at the Nord beside him, "Do make those bastards pay."

Argis leaves with a smile playing around his mouth and a fire burning in his eyes. He will cement his fame where it had originated: in the blood and dirt of battle. The Reach will remember his name for centuries to come. He will do whatever it takes to make it so.


	19. CUT CONTENT

**CUT CONTENT**

o) Ulfric and Rikke were originally meant to have at least an entire chapter dedicated to their meeting, but then I was never happy with it. There was a lot of talk about what's going on in the world, within the Empire, and how the Markarth Uprising was staged – basically what would have filled several chapters on juicy political intrigue and the proxy war in the Reach that was meant to weaken Skyrim.

Keep in mind that at this point Ulfric and Rikke are still on friendly terms – he hasn't killed Torygg and begun a civil war yet, after all. But even so, that friendship is strained. Rikke may respect Ulfric's dedication to Talos, but she thinks he's an open-hearted fool for doing so overtly instead of keeping his worship private. And as much as she hates the WGC, she will follow orders, being a Legionnaire through and through. Obviously that is something that doesn't sit well with Ulfric.

In some versions Ulfric tried to talk her into rebelling. In others she voiced her concern over how his actions could be seen as an act of war against the Empire. In some they reached an understanding, in others their friendship did not survive the encounter.

I'm still not sure how much Rikke and Galmar know about what exactly happened to Ulfric.

At any rate, it's where things begin to fall apart for the two of them.

Tons and tons of talk about what exactly happened during the Great War.

x

o) In case you're interested: remember that Ulfric had two older sisters? (This was inspired by actual in-game dialogue when Ulfric said he was his father's only _son._ Maybe it's because English is not my native language, but this strikes me as a very weird way to put it that you're on only child. To me it sounds like omission, like somebody who doesn't want to disclose the truth, but doesn't want to outright lie, either.).

Freydís was the eldest. Titus Mede enthusiastically pitched her Legion under the train to cover his escape when the IC was taken. Ulfric was in captivity at the time. He believes his sister died as a direct result of him breaking under Elenwen's torture and Mede's cowardice. A cheer for personal grudges \o/ – or not.

Following the loss of the capital, the Imperial armies withdrew to regroup in the north and in the south, planning how to retake the city. Ulfric was sent back a spy and a broken wreck. (The Thalmor told him that if he didn't report to them, their moles would let the Legion know that it had been him who had betrayed his comrades and made it possible for the Dominion to take the IC in the first place. We know that's a lie, but the question is whether the Legion would have cared.)

Then, in the Red Ring battle, the Empire retook the city. The war was fought to a standstill, and then a peace treaty was signed. The Thalmor remained, to oversee the enforcement of the WGC.

They searched out Isalind, Ulfric's second sister, who at the time was a healer who travelled from Cheydinhal closer to the IC to take care of the wounded soldiers. Because she was older than Ulfric, she would become Jarl, eventually succeeding Hænir. The Thalmor made sure she died in the massacres, officially called purges of Talos worshippers, so that Elenwen's pet-project; the traumatized, brainwashed heir could be planted on his father's throne as a Thalmor puppet. Ulfric knows it, too. No other reason to kill healers after the official end of the fighting. And it wasn't done subtly. But – how did they know he had a sister? Well, that's what interrogation is there for.

[Oh, and remember that she and Galmar were lovers? No? Surprise!]

x

o) More of Ulfric torture flashbacks. Yeah, nobody needs/wants more of that. I'll spare you the details.

x

o) There was also a draft of Argis and Ulfric celebrating Ulfric's 30th birthday in a somewhat forced-cheer manner. It ended up being kinda depressing. Some versions had Argis managing to get Ulfric out for a day. Mind that Ulfric spends 6 years in that prison.

x

o) Various scenes of another escape attempt/a fight between Ulfric and Argis – I scrapped those pretty early on. They didn't fit in their weird friendship, in fact, they would have destroyed it. Also, Argis would rip Ulfric apart like a mastiff would a doll, if he really had to, and I need Ulfric alive for obvious reasons. Another Argis-Igmund scene, about how he spies on Ulfric and Igmund is getting impatient. Again, I couldn't fit it in. Already that first Argis-Igmund scene feels out of place, but then again it serves to show what's going on where Ulfric doesn't witness it. And the rest? I believe the last chapter wraps it up nicely.

x

o) Also, Argis' plan was a little more complicated than the story might let you believe. Essentially, he had to get Ulfric out from underneath the barracks, which is bad on one side, because there's a lot of guards nearby at nearly any given time; but can also work to his advantage because it's not really suspicious for him to be there. He had to find a day when most guards would be reliably drunk, had to make sure his own men wouldn't be blamed, subtly exchanging them for guards that are known to have stronger ties to the Silver-Bloods than they strictly should have, then he needed to make sure that one of his own was at the gates. It also required coordinating Galmar and Thorsten's arrival so that they would be able to take advantage of the landmark watchtower (and the lone drugged guard there) during essentially the one day it wasn't manned, and providing both Ulfric, and his party with an escape route.

Just so that you can appreciate the full scale it.

Those are the main points. The rest is just dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. Maybe I can salvage some of it, throw it into HT, especially Argis' and Ulfric's strategy of dealing with the Thalmor. I'm especially fond of that part.

* * *

If you have taken the time to read this, then Argis has a hot, steaming apple pie for you. Thank you. It means a lot to me.


End file.
